Amlan highlights the “Need for Speed” when binding biotoxins

4 August 2025

3 minute read

By: Lee Williamson

Europe

Dr. Aldo Rossi, the Vice President of Innovation and Technical Services at Amlan International, spoke to The Poultry Site’s Sarah Mikesell at IPPE in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, about the threat of biotoxins in poultry.

What threat do biotoxins like T2 toxin pose to poultry health and performance?

There are several types of toxins and biotoxins, and one of them is produced by funguses while others are produced by bacteria. Each attack various parts of the animal and the animal system. If you look at a mycotoxin, it starts taking effect immediately once it's consumed. You mentioned T2; it can start by causing lesions in the mouth, and when it gets down to the intestinal system, it causes intestinal cell death, known as enteritis. Then, eventually those toxins get absorbed into the bloodstream and begin affecting other organs and parts of the animal.

Primarily with fungus toxins, mycotoxins can affect the reproductive system, including egg production, fertility, hatch and even egg quality and the immune system. As the immune system tries to fight that, it also diminishes the immune system's ability to fight off other diseases, which impacts livability and other performance measures like weight gain.

What solutions does Amlan offer to combat these challenges?

We have a broad portfolio, but the base of our portfolio is our clay; it's an incredibly unique compound. Calibrin-Z is the name of the product internationally, and we have a similar product here in North America and the US. The unique mineral composition has an exceptionally large internal surface area for absorption of these toxins.

Our clay goes through a proprietary process to enhance that ability to absorb a broad spectrum of toxins. From the aflatoxins, which most clays bind, we cover a broad spectrum of all the key mycotoxins that most people are concerned about in the industry. As I mentioned earlier, biotoxins, including the endo and exotoxins, from bacteria binds to our clay.

How is Amlan clay unique?

Its uniqueness comes from its composition. We have one part of the mineral that is called opal-CT lepispheres, and it provides several different things that are unique to the calcium montmorillonite family of clays. The uniqueness is that it not only adds additional binding sites and surface area, which is all internal interconnected surface areas. It also allows the product to have maintained its structure even through the thermal processing that we go through which enhances and broadens the spectrum of toxins that it binds.

Plus, we have complete control of the clay and the process. We are vertically integrated, so we mine the clay from one mine, and Amlan has complete control of that mine. We have consistency in the product because we know exactly where it comes from. We distribute from there all around the world.

At IPPE you're able to demonstrate this rapid speed of toxin binding. Can you explain that to our readers?

There are several clay products out there that bind toxins, but to be successful in the real world, you must be able to bind several distinct types of toxins. As I mentioned, how fast you bind them is especially important.

Within 30 minutes of consumption, about 90% of these toxins, like mycotoxins, are being absorbed in the body. So, it’s already having an effect on the surface inside the gut but also externally throughout the body.

Absorbing the toxins quickly is key to minimizing their impact on the animal's performance. We have several studies that show depending on the toxin, we can bind up to 99% of those toxins within one minute, so it's extremely fast. Several of the other toxins, we can bind up to 95% to 96% of them within a minute, which is much faster than most of the competition against which we have evaluated. This minimizes the damage in the animal because it doesn't give it a chance to attack the gut or anywhere else in the body.

Some of your booth visuals illustrate the “Need for Speed”.

We have a video that's being shown here at the booth that visually shows people how quickly it can absorb toxins. We have two tubes with a toxin in there and have a color to it at a certain pH and then we add our clay to it, and you can see how quickly it binds the toxin and eliminates it then settles on the bottom.