We all know vitamins are essential for the health of our farm animals but do you also know that of all vitamins, vitamin A may well be the most challenging to produce?

To prevent the highly instable vitamin A from degrading when exposed to light, oxygen or heat the vitamin needs to be protected by encapsulation and stabilizers. EMQ used to be the perfect antioxidant for this job, but, since it was banned from the feed industry in the EU and other large markets in 2018, alternative solutions needed to be found to protect vitamin A.

Vitamin manufacturing and product formulation start with the use of safe and traceable ingredients and processes and a delicate balance in product form development between optimum handling, mixability, stability and bio-availability. Very few producers have mastered these skills as proved by recent quality issues from large vitamin A suppliers.

DSM, vitamin pioneer and largest feed and food vitamin producer in the world, developed the new EMQ-free ROVIMIX^® A1000. It performs as good as its EMQ predecessor and better than many other vitamin A products in the market, as proved in multiple internal and customer trials under various conditions in both premix and feed.

That does not mean that vitamin A forms do not lose activity. They do, like it used to happen in EMQ times, but with the right product form (ROVIMIX^® A1000), loss of activity under mild conditions is negligible and, under much more stressing conditions such as complete premix including choline chloride and trace minerals with a long storage time, potential losses are minimized being much lower than with other vit A products.

Premixers, feed mills, integrators and farmers need to be aware of this situation as well as the large variations between products and make the right choice as we are not comparing apples with apples anymore.

In the end, it is all about the animal getting the right amount of vitamins for its optimal health and performance.

Trial vit A products in pelleted feed (data available in other formats)

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Article made possible through the contribution of DSM

DSM ROVIMIX® A1000, your reliable vitamin A source