NRSP9: National Animal Nutrition Program

(National Research Support Project Summary)

Status: Active

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SAES-422 Reports

Annual/Termination Reports:

[05/04/2022] [01/09/2023] [11/30/2023]

Date of Annual Report: 05/04/2022

Report Information

Annual Meeting Dates: 09/27/2021 - 09/30/2021
Period the Report Covers: 10/01/2020 - 09/30/2021

Participants

In-Person:
Phil Miller
Ryan Dilger
Joel Caton
Nancy Irlbeck
Carey Williams
Brian Small
Heidi Rossow
Luis Tedeschi
Robin Schoen
Lesley Oliver (partial)
Deb Hamernik (partial)

Virtual (partial)
Robin White
Paul Patterson
Don Beitz
Del Gatlin
Merlin Lindemann
Art Goetsch

A complete list of NRSP-9 committee members can be found at https://animalnutrition.org/committees.

Brief Summary of Minutes

The NANP Coordinating Committee, Feed Composition Committee and Modeling Committee conduct regular (typically monthly) virtual meetings and calls to discuss and plan activities being conducted in support of NRSP9 goals. Coordinating Committee meetings focused on providing overall oversight to the project and serving as the primary liaison with the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) in support of efforts to update animal species nutrient utilization reports. The Coordinating Committee (CC) revisited the membership and leadership of the Modeling and Nutrient Utilization Committees as well as devised a plan for accomplishing project activities in light of continued challenges in finding postdoctoral associates to support the project. Planning to track impacts and metrics to contribute to the mid-term report, as well as exploring options for alternatives to off-the-top Multistate funding were ongoing discussions throughout the year. The CC also began planning for the next NANP Summit to be held Fall 2022.

The Feed Composition Committee met regularly via phone conference throughout the year to discuss the continued development and improvement of the feed composition database. In addition to the continued improvements of the feed composition database resources, the chair of this committee also provided leadership in implementing components of the marketing and communication activities directed by the CC as well as the development of educational resources for supporting animal nutrition instruction for postsecondary and continuing education audiences.

The Modeling Committee also held regular conference calls throughout the year to discuss a wide range of issues related to expanding modeling tools available and improving usage across the research community. Major activities included continued exploration of translating NASEM models to a common modeling platform and organizing modeling workshops for students, researchers and other stakeholders.

Overall, the activities of the NANP represent a time commitment of approximately 500 faculty hours and 2000 graduate student hours. This effort represents a significant leverage of the off the top Multistate funding provided to NANP through the Agricultural Experiment Stations.

Complete minutes from all Coordinating Committee meetings held this year are attached.

Minutes Attachment:

2020-21 minutes.pdf

Accomplishments

Major accomplishments of the Coordinating, Modeling and Feed Composition Committees include: <ul> <li>Recruited new members of all three committees. New members replacing those who phase out of participation following their terms are critical to bringing in new perspectives and knowledge to the project. Members were selected to ensure that committee composition reflected a diversity of animal species expertise, representation from all four regions and inclusion of 1890 Land-Grants and Industry.</li> <li>The CC explored avenues for revenue generation to provide on-going support for NANP. Moved forward on establishing 501(c)3 status for NANP and identified services for which fees might be collected.</li> <li>A working group was established to develop a standardized zebrafish experimental diet. Work has begun to devise and test formulations.</li> <li>Two nutrition modeling workshops were held in conjunction with national scientific meetings to help convey the concepts needed and approaches available for developing, parameterizing and evaluating nutrient models needed for animal research. The workshop held during the American Dairy Science Association had 25 participants and abstracts of presentations can be found in the Journal of Dairy Science Vol. 104 Supplement 1, pages 341-343. The workshop held at the American Society of Animal Science meeting had 90 participants and links to presentations can be found on the NANP website at <a href="https://animalnutrition.org/workshops-symposia">https://animalnutrition.org/workshops-symposia</a>.  </li> <li>The CC initiated discussion with Look East, a PR and communications consultant for the food and agriculture industry, which led to the development of a 3-year social media plan for NANP.</li> <li>A comprehensive style guide for NANP was developed. This covers all branding related to the project, including logo usage, color scheme, font choice, tone in language, best practices with images and videos, etc. Stylized video ‘bumpers’ for NANP video assets and a best-practice protocol for developing video-based educational resources were also developed to accompany other communication resources like the style guide and Powerpoint templates.</li> <li>Six new educational primers were developed by the Feed Composition committee and made available through the NANP website. Documents released in 2021 cover understanding percentages, dry matter vs. as-fed concepts in animal nutrition, parts per million & parts per billion, the concept of energy in animal nutrition research, feed intake and units of measure and conversions common to animal nutrition research.</li> <li>Created an NANP Glossary, which consolidates terminology from both the modeling and feed comp databases, including all nutrient/analytical names from the composition tables.</li> <li>Launched newly-styled modeling and feed composition databases, which are now truly integrated into the NANP website with new design features and easier data management and display.</li> <li>Developed a plan for incorporating the beef and dairy feed composition datasets into the consolidated NANP database, with implementation to be completed in 2022</li> </ul>

Publications

Peer-reviewed papers: <ul> <li>Tedeschi, Luis O., et al. "ASAS-NANP SYMPOSIUM: Mathematical modeling in animal nutrition: training the future generation in data and predictive analytics for sustainable development. A Summary." Journal of Animal Science2 (2021): skab023.</li> <li>Stephens, Emma C. "ASAS-NANP SYMPOSIUM: Review of systems thinking concepts and their potential value in animal science research." Journal of Animal Science2 (2021): skab021.</li> <li>Gerrits, Walter JJ, et al. "ASAS-NANP symposium: digestion kinetics in pigs: the next step in feed evaluation and a ready-to-use modeling exercise." Journal of animal science2 (2021): skab020.</li> <li>Morota, Gota, et al. "ASAS-NANP SYMPOSIUM: prospects for interactive and dynamic graphics in the era of data-rich animal science." Journal of animal science2 (2021): skaa402.</li> <li>Wang, Zhuoyi, et al. "ASAS-NANP SYMPOSIUM: Applications of machine learning for livestock body weight prediction from digital images." Journal of Animal Science2 (2021): skab022.</li> <li>Hanigan, Mark D., and Veridiana L. Daley. "Use of mechanistic nutrition models to identify sustainable food animal production." Annual Review of Animal Biosciences8 (2020): 355-376.</li> <li>Daley, V. L., et al. "Modeling fatty acids for dairy cattle: Models to predict total fatty acid concentration and fatty acid digestion of feedstuffs." Journal of Dairy Science8 (2020): 6982-6999.</li> <li>Hanigan, M. D., et al. "Predicting ruminally undegraded and microbial protein flows from the rumen." Journal of Dairy Science8 (2021): 8685-8707.</li> <li>Li, Meng M., and Mark D. Hanigan. "A revised representation of ruminal pH and digestive reparameterization of the Molly cow model." Journal of Dairy Science12 (2020): 11285-11299.</li> <li>Lawrence, Laurie. "The nutrient requirements of horses: historical perspectives." Translational Animal Science1 (2022): txac021.</li> <li>Robertson, Isaiah, et al. "Nitrogen Management Criteria System (NMCS)." <a href="https://infews-er.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Dairy-Nitrogen-Cohort-Final-Report-final.pdf">https://infews-er.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Dairy-Nitrogen-Cohort-Final-Report-final.pdf</a></li> </ul> Abstracts <ul> <li>Menendez, Hector M., Benjamin L. Turner, and Luis O. Tedeschi. "144 A modeling framework to assess the impact of the texas beef cattle water footprint on livestock sustainability." Journal of Animal ScienceSupplement_3 (2019): 147-147.</li> <li>Daley, V. L., and M. D. Hanigan. "Prediction of total milk fat of dairy cows: a multi-model approach." EAAP Scientific Series. Wageningen Academic Publishers, 2019. 409-411.</li> </ul>

Impact Statements

NANP resources are being incorporated into publications throughout the animal science community and beyond, demonstrating the role of these resources in enabling research. NANP publications or those which reference the NANP website resources published between 2016 and 2021 (n~30) have generated >375 citations.

Date of Annual Report: 01/09/2023

Report Information

Annual Meeting Dates: 10/03/2022 - 10/03/2022
Period the Report Covers: 10/01/2021 - 09/30/2022

Participants

Members of the Coordinating, Modeling and Feed Composition Committees who attended meetings throughout the year can be found on the National Animal Nutrition Program website at https://animalnutrition.org/committees.

Brief Summary of Minutes

As in previous years, the NANP Coordinating Committee (CC), Feed Composition Committee (FCC) and Modeling Committee (MC) conducted regular (typically monthly) virtual meetings and calls to discuss and plan activities being conducted in support of NRSP9 goals. Committee chairs and subcommittees (such as the Summit planning group) also continued to meet as needed throughout the year, reporting back to the CC. Coordinating Committee meetings focused on providing overall oversight to the project and serving as the primary liaison with the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) in support of efforts to update animal species nutrient utilization reports. The CC meetings throughout 2021-22 focused on developing social media to improve the reach of NANP, conducting a mid-term evaluation, communicating the impact of the program, planning for the next national Summit, and working toward alternatives to off-the-top Multistate funding.

The FCC met regularly via phone conference throughout the year to discuss the continued development and improvement of the feed composition database. The primary issue addressed by the FCC was the consolidation of the NASEMdatasets into a single database with reconciled feed ingredient terms across species. This is critical to having the database ready for upload of the poultry and swine datasets as those NASEM reports are completed, as well as ready for importing data from other sources, including commercial laboratories.

The MC also held regular conference calls throughout the year to discuss a wide range of issues related to expanding modeling tools available and improving usage across the research community. Major activities focused on the educational objectives of the committee, including both adding downloadable resources from the NANP website and holding modeling workshops at national meetings (e.g. ASAS Annual Meeting).

Complete minutes from all Coordinating Committee meetings held this year are included in the attached.

Minutes Attachment:

Minutes with Summit agenda.pdf

Accomplishments

<ol> <li>A major effort of the NANP is to continually improve the database resources made available to registered users online. This work is necessary to ensure the usability and sustainability of the databases as research resources. The FCC completed the reformatting of ingredient datasets from the NASEM Nutrient Requirements of Beef Cattle report and the data scientists are working with the web developers to upload to the database. The updated data structure will allow for easier sorting of specific ingredients and attributes of interest by users. Significant progress was also made in preparing the NASEM Nutrient Requirements for Dairy Cattle report data in the same way. Species-specific terminology was reconciled with the common glossary of terms, further facilitating the creation of a consolidated, multi-species database.</li> <li>The new database structure will facilitate updates of new datasets from commercial laboratories and other data sources and help with efforts to potentially monetize services provided by NANP.</li> <li>NANP leadership worked with the Federation of Animal Science Societies to complete bylaws, articles of incorporation and tax documents toward establishing 501(c)3 status for NANP. This is an important step toward the business plan for leveraging off-the-top funding.</li> <li>A nutrition modeling workshop was held in conjunction with the annual ASAS meeting on June 26, 2022 to help convey the concepts needed and approaches available for developing, parameterizing and evaluating nutrient models needed for animal research. The in-person workshop had 45 participants and included hands-on sessions in addition to lectures and demonstrations.  </li> <li>The social media plan developed last year has been initiated with the goal of driving new users to the NANP website and highlighting accomplishments of the program. Though implementation only recently started, analytics indicate over 230 users have accessed NANP social media via Facebook and LinkedIn.</li> <li>The CC engaged an external evaluator to assess progress toward meeting project objectives and documenting evidences of impact on research. The report indicates significant progress toward or accomplishment of 4 of the 6 objectives within the first 2 years of the project. Impacts from the report are summarized below.  </li> <li>The CC continued planning for the next national NANP Summit, titled “Producing Healthy Diets for Sustainable Animal Systems”, to be held on Wednesday, April 12, 2023 at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC. The intent of this 3rd national NANP summit is to facilitate intense discussion by experts on the evaluation of the use of animals to sustainably provide for healthy human diets. A draft agenda for the summit is included in the attachments.</li> </ol>

Publications

Jacobs, M., A. Remus, C. Gaillard, H. M. Menendez, III, L. O. Tedeschi, S. Neethirajan, and J. L. Ellis. 2022. ASAS-NANP SYMPOSIUM: MATHEMATICAL MODELING IN ANIMAL NUTRITION: Limitations and potential next steps for modeling and modelers in the animal sciences. J. Anim. Sci. 100 (6):1-15. doi: 10.1093/jas/skac132   Menendez, H. M., III, J. R. Brennan, C. Gaillard, K. Ehlert, J. Quintana, S. Neethirajan, A. Remus, M. Jacobs, I. A. M. A. Teixeira, B. L. Turner, and L. O. Tedeschi. 2022. ASAS-NANP SYMPOSIUM: MATHEMATICAL MODELING IN ANIMAL NUTRITION: Opportunities and challenges of confined and extensive precision livestock production. J. Anim. Sci. 100 (6):1-19. doi: 10.1093/jas/skac160   Tedeschi, L. O. 2022. ASAS-NANP SYMPOSIUM: MATHEMATICAL MODELING IN ANIMAL NUTRITION: The progression of data analytics and artificial intelligence in support of sustainable development in animal science. J. Anim. Sci. 100 (6):1-11. doi: 10.1093/jas/skac111

Impact Statements

The NANP project has been productive in terms of refereed publications generated from modeling and feed composition committee members. Peer-reviewed journal articles have been cited 217 times by 524 unique authors in 37 countries in journals with impact factors ranging from 20.59 to 0.56. Students cited the NANP peer-reviewed publications in masters theses or doctoral dissertations 23 times. It is noteworthy that these publications have impacted the dissemination of scientific literature across the US and the World.

Date of Annual Report: 11/30/2023

Report Information

Annual Meeting Dates: 09/06/2023 - 09/06/2023
Period the Report Covers: 10/01/2022 - 09/30/2023

Participants

Brief Summary of Minutes

NANP Coordinating Committee (CC), Feed Composition Committee (FCC) and Modeling Committee (MC) conducted regular meetings throughout the year to plan activities that contribute to NRSP9 goals. Committee chairs and subcommittees met as needed throughout the year and reported to their respective committee chairs. An in-person meeting of the CC was also held in conjunction with the Summit. Discussions in the 2022-23 year focused on execution of the NANP Summit and subsequent dissemination of takeaways, continued improvements to databases and alignment with National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) nutrient utilization report updates, expanded social media, and alternative funding models. Minutes for all CC meetings are included in the attachment.

Minutes Attachment:

FY23 NANP minutes.pdf

Accomplishments

Coordinating Committee: Progress toward business plan: The CC chair completed the application for nonprofit status submitted in conjunction with FASS, allowing NANP the ability to accept funding through the organization rather than through one of the member institutions. This is a critical step in the future NANP business plan. Facilitating downloads or databases in response to user needs: A MOU is being developed to allow NANP to impose conditions and standards on database sharing. This Memorandum of Agreement ("Agreement") is entered into on the day of data download (Effective Data) by and between the National Animal Nutrition Program (NANP) and the Data User. The NANP agrees to share specific data with the Data User for the purpose of research and teaching. The Data User agrees to the following terms and conditions: source citation, non-commercial use, commercial use, non-shareable, no alterations, reporting errors, and duration and termination. Partnering with NRCS:  An agreement between the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the NANP, through Texas A&M AgriLife Research as the lead recipient, was developed to increase: (1) awareness of livestock feed management, (2) utilization and implementation of climate-smart feed management, and (3) application of current science and technical knowledge to demonstrate the impact of livestock feeding management. This agreement aims to create a Climate-Smart Feed Management (CSFM) committee to work closely with the NRCS, current NANP committees, relevant organizations, animal and feed industries, and academia to improve livestock feeding management by engaging stakeholders, identifying priorities, providing training, and disseminating information. This agreement will provide up to $1.5 million to support the effort. NANP Summit 2023 - Producing Healthy Diets from Sustainable Animal Systems: The 2023 NANP Summit took place at the National Academy of Science Building, in Washington DC on Wednesday, April 12, 2023. The stakeholders that were invited included: Animal commodity groups, Agriculture Committee staffers, USDA leadership, members of CFAR, AFIA, Agricultural Experiment Station leaders, NAS, FFAR, and Governors Council. The mission of the Summit was to evaluate the use of animals to sustainably provide for healthy human diets. Speakers from across the county and Canada presented on livestock sustainability, challenges of world food security, alternate protein sources, impact of livestock on the environment and climate change, use of life cycles assessment and role of animals in future food systems. At this Summit we also hosted a Graduate Student Poster Competition. There were 16 abstracts submitted, from which 6 students were selected to receive a scholarship to attend the Summit and present their work in the form of a poster.  Post-Summit publications are in the process of being produced and will be widely circulated when finished.   Some highlights from the presentations and discussions included: <ul> <li>Mitigating the climate impacts of livestock production and improving circularity may also provide new economic opportunities for livestock producers via carbon and ecosystems services markets.</li> <li>The amount and type of animal-sourced food that is healthy and sustainable will depend on the local context and health priorities and will change over time.</li> <li>Policies, programs, and incentives are needed to ensure best practices in production, curb consumption where high, and sustainably increase consumption where low.</li> <li>By continuously improving production efficiency and management practices, animal agriculture can be a short-term solution to fight climate warming that the global community can leverage while developing long-term solutions for reducing fossil fuel carbon emissions.</li> <li>Progress is being made in all sectors of the food animal industry to help control and reduce impacts on the environment in areas including greenhouse gas emissions (methane, nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and ammonia), fossil fuel use, water consumption, and excess nutrient excretion.</li> <li>Animal nutritionists have a crucial role to play through incorporating sustainability criteria into the formulation of animal diets and production systems.</li> <li>The feeds that animals consume have an influence on both feed and animal production, and sustainability is a relevant and important domain for the field of animal nutrition.</li> </ul>  Summit recordings: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLluKn_9UrhIRYw4qvrF1ivE1Jv7qB-ML0">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLluKn_9UrhIRYw4qvrF1ivE1Jv7qB-ML0</a> Feed Composition Committee: As part of the continued effort to improve the feed composition database, the FCC completed  curation of more than 3 million ingredient composition records from the most recent beef and dairy NASEM reports, which required extensive sourcing and manipulation of the original files to generate the dataset needed for the NANP feed composition database. The feed composition database user workflow for selecting ingredients was revamped to make it more intuitive and easier to use; this ongoing effort seeks to improve the educational value and utility for broadening the incorporation of this NANP resource in academic curricula. The FCC created new database structures to permit the importation of a wider variety of feed composition datasets and enable the incorporation of the new user workflow for selecting ingredients. The FCC proposed, and had accepted, a symposium to be held at the 2024 ASAS-CSAS-WSASAS Annual Meeting involving analytical errors and anomalies in analyzed nutrient composition of feedstuffs. The chair of the FCC engaged with multiple industry partners who are interested in providing large datasets for incorporation into the consolidated NANP feed composition database. The database structure and interface work will help support this engagement with industry. Modeling Committee: The MC hired a part-time post-doctoral associate to help update/revise the existing modeling databases available through NANP. Updates have been completed for 5 of the 10 databases available. This included a detailed examination and error correction of the updated original data and the R code used to convert this data into the NANP database style. Furthermore, new variables were added, and some variables were modified or removed during this process, leading to an update of the Abbreviation List table. The MC created a Diet Formulation/Optimization Platform Subcommittee to investigate alternatives to the use of HTML or Excel platforms for future NASEM diet formulation/evaluation models. The objectives of this subcommittee are to: (1) collect information on possible optimization platforms that could be used in diet formulation or evaluation programs for future NASEM Nutrient Requirement series models; and (2) test optimization platforms to compare their functionality for solution time, solution consistency, solution resolution, and stability. Nineteen potential optimization algorithms have been collected and will be tested by the subcommittee. A one day Modeling Workshop was held at the ADSA meeting on June 25 in Ottawa, Canada. It was attended by ~40 participants. Most participants stayed for the whole day. There were three invited speakers, each presenting a short theory seminar and a hands-on demonstration. All three speakers were invited to provide reviews to the Journal of Dairy Science on their seminar subjects, and two of those reviews are nearly submitted. The Modeling Committee will continue to work with JDS (if they remain interested) to publish the workshops into invited review papers. The evaluation approach for future workshops will be reexamined due to a poor response rate from the follow up survey. The ASAS-NANP Pre-Conference on “Mathematical Modeling in Animal Nutrition: Training the Future Generation in Data and Predictive Analytics for a Sustainable Development” was held on July 16 in Albuquerque, NM and had approximately 70 participants, of which 30 (about 43%) responded to the survey. Six invited speakers from different modeling expertise delivered three 40-minute presentations and three 1.5-hour hands-on presentations. There was a statistical difference between before and after the pre-conference for all questions related to understanding fundamental and predictive modeling techniques. From 1 (minimal) to 5 (expert) scoring system, the average for six questions was 2.75 (before) and 3.56 (after). The participants were “extremely satisfied” with the morning and afternoon presentations and indicated the material learned was “very to extremely effective” on their work or research. The average overall satisfaction for the pre-conference was 4.53 (scale 1 = low to 5 = high). The seventh ASAS-NANP Pre-Conference will occur in 2024 in Calgary, Canada, and will help prepare training for the next generation in modeling.

Publications

Four peer-reviewed publications have been submitted and accepted by the Journal of Animal Science from the 2022 ASAS-NANP Symposium. <ul> <li>Brennan, Menendez, Ehlert, Tedeschi. ASAS-NANP symposium: mathematical modeling in animal nutrition: Making sense of big data and machine learning: How open-source code can advance training of animal scientists.</li> <li>Kaniyamattam and Tedeschi. ASAS-NANP symposium: mathematical modeling in animal nutrition: Agent-based modeling for livestock systems: the mechanics of development and application.</li> <li>Munoz-Tamayo and Tedeschi. ASAS-NANP symposium: mathematical modeling in animal nutrition: the power of identifiability analysis for dynamic modeling in animal science - a practitioner approach.</li> <li>Tedeschi, Menendez III, and Remus. ASAS-NANP symposium: mathematical modeling in animal nutrition: training the future generation in data and predictive analytics for sustainable development. A summary of the 2021 and 2022 symposia.</li> </ul>

Impact Statements

The implementation of a social media plan has increased awareness of NANP resources. Social media audience across all platforms nearly doubled from August 2022 to June 2023. Though audiences in each platform might be considered small (between 47 and 831 followers depending on platform) the post engagement rates based on impressions are 10 to 100 times higher than the industry average.