- The medication technology
ensures that the drug is sorbed into the bulk of the
formulated feed and not onto the surface of the feed.
The technology further ensures that all feed
pellets obtain the same amount of drug; the product becomes very homogenous concerning concentration.
- Since the drug is not
accumulated on the surface, the novel medicated feed tastes
more like feed and not like drug. Palatability is very good. In
experiments with rainbow trout, fish ingested the medicated feed
instantaneously. This contributes to effective medication.
- Due to the homogeneous
drug distribution between the pellets, the drug dose can
be exactly related to the weight of the medicated feed.
The weight of the medicated feed is not
an uncertainty factor when it comes to dosing the required amount of
drug. There always remain uncontrollable
factors, e.g. the amount of pellets that the individual fish ingest,
and the weight of individual fish. The percentage of fish receiving the
target daily dose depends on the number and size of
the uncertainty factors. Eliminating an uncertainty factor increases
the likelihood that the animal receives the effective
amount of medication.
- Due to the homogeneous
drug distribution between the pellets, it is not likely
that a substantial number of fish are overdosed; thus no food safety concerns arise.
- The structure of the
medicated feed formulation seems to contribute to excellent bioavailability;
this contributes to effective medication.
- Since the drug is not
accumulated on the surface of the feed pellets, occasional mechanical abrasion
causes smaller loss in drug dose (which means effective medication) and lower
environmental contamination than in case of surface coating.
- There is no
leaching or only very low leaching of the drug from the medicated
pellets. Fish or other animal
receive the entire drug that is in the pellets.
This too contributes to effective medication. There is no or only very low emission into the environment from the medicated
feed.
- The product is
occupationally safe on fish farms. The
concentration of the drug on the surface of the pellets is much lower
than on the surface of coated feeds. When
pellets are surface coated, the oily drug layer and the oily sealing
layer may become one layer. This
layer contains then all the drug that the pellet carries.
- The drug is not proned to
thermal or oxidative decomposition during pellet extrusion since
already formulated pellets are treated with the drug.
- The novel product has good storage stability.