3 ms·
The active ingredient is bromoform, which might even be cheaper to dose than the raw algae.
by kleton 6y ago
The active ingredient is bromoform, which might even be cheaper to dose than the raw algae.
- ars 6y agoBromoform is incredibly toxic, and possibly even a carcinogen. But if you feed them seaweed then it's suddenly all natural. /s That might be why. But in seriousness, I'm not so OK with feeding animals bromoform or seaweed for that matter if that's a common component.
- AlanYx 6y agoI agree with you. The EPA classifies it as a Group B2 probable human carcinogen, and it has been shown to cause liver and intestinal tumors in animals. I wonder if the reason the industry is pushing red seaweed supplementation rather than direct bromoform supplementation is that the latter might require greater evidence of safety (being essentially a medication rather than a foodstuff) before being allowed?
- selimthegrim 6y agoIs this what’s new about it? I thought this finding was already known?
- kleton 6y agoI'm not sure what's new here. All of this has been known at least 5 years.
- twic 6y agoThe nature of science is that experiments are repeated many times with slight variations before we consider that something is known. This paper does add details I hadn't seen before - it shows that adding algae to the diet increases the efficiency of converting feed to body mass, and reduces feed intake. There was reason to believe that would happen, but I'm not sure it had been demonstrated experimentally.
- readflaggedcomm 6y agoWhich is fascinating, because I thought seaweeds only helped cattle by adding protease enzymes, which also works with humans: try cooking legumes with kombu/konbu. But cooking up enzymes outside of seaweed seems a lot more costly than synthesizing solvents, assuming dosing cattle that way doesn't taint the end product.