Animal health monogastric animals

Another field of increasing interest for public opinion nowadays is animal welfare. Quite some research deals with the interaction between nutrition and animal health on one side, and the possibility to replace in vivo with in vitro experiments on the other side. The databases available today are impressive and the possibility to share and get information worldwide makes it easier to develop models to predict both animal requirements and feed nutritive values. Indeed modeling is extensively dealt with in the symposium and deserves two sessions, one dedicated to ruminants and the other to monogastrics. 

In monogastric, and particularly human, nutrition the term dietary fibre is often used and attention has been focused on its importance in relation to health. Dietary fibre (DF) was defined as lignin plus those polysaccharides that cannot be digested by monogastric endogenous enzymes. Initially epidemiological studies linked a lack of DF to constipation, gut and bowel disorders, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes however, the causes of such diseases are multifactorial and in some cases it is not just DF per se that has the beneficial effects but other aspects of the diet also (e.g. antioxidants). Nevertheless, DF is a major component related to health in humans and it has equally important effects in animals (see below). 

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