Vitamin E: essential... and increasingly expensive

What are the benefits of

Vitamine E ?

Vitamin E is essential in animal nutrition. It broadly refers to a wide range of molecules with different properties. It exists in both synthetic and natural forms, particularly in plant-based products.

Vitamin E is crucial for the integrity and optimal functioning of the immune, nervous, muscular, and reproductive systems. Conversely, a deficiency in vitamin E can cause damage to biological cells and membranes.

A powerful

Antioxidant

Vitamin E is a powerful antioxidant, essential in the diet of farm animals, with well-documented effects, including:

Protecting lipids from oxidation due to its antioxidant properties against free radicals;
Contributing to the improvement of meat quality;
Enhancing reproductive parameters.

The needs for vitamin E vary greatly depending on the species. They depend on a multitude of factors: physiological and health status, age, nutritional status, and function (type of production, meat, milk, eggs, etc.). It is important to note that absorption is limited in young animals. Therefore, they require an optimal diversification of antioxidant intake.

Synthetic Vitamin E:

A volatile price

Periods of strong inflations on synthetic vitamin E generate non-negligible costs on feed formulas. The last surge in the price of Vitamin E 50 took place at the end of 2017, with a record price of around €20/kg.

The situation could repeat itself in the coming weeks. The price has continued to climb steadily in recent months, reaching over €15/kg today (13/08/2024).

Unforeseen incidents affecting the production chain can have a major impact on price volatility. At the end of July, a fire at the Ludwigshafen (DE) production site of BASF, the leading producer of vitamin E, led to a halt in the distribution of vitamin E from this site. This had a significant impact on the price of vitamin E.

In this context, a solution to optimize its use relies on the diversification of antioxidant intake, and in particular the use of standardized grape extract (dry grape extract), capable of optimizing the effectiveness of vitamin E.