Dietary acidification inhibits of intestinal bacteria
competing with the host for available nutrients, and a
reduction of possibly toxic bacterial metabolites, thus
improving weight gain of the host animal. Furthermore, the
growth inhibition of potential pathogen bacteria and
zoonotic bacteria, e.g. E. coli and Salmonella, in the feed
and in the GI- tract are of benefit with respect to animal
health. In poultry production organic acids have mainly
been used in order to sanities the feed considering problems
with Salmonella infections (Iba and Berchieri, 1995;
Berchieri and Barrow, 1996; Thompson and Hinton, 1997).
The superiority of Galliacid over the Biacid may be
because of the microencapsulation the organic acids of
Galliacid are coated and protected by a matrix of fatty acids.
Thus, the organic acids can reach the intestine without
modification, where they are released slowly under the
action of lipase secretions. Non dissociated organic acids
can be active on bacteria and modulate the intestinal flora mixtures gave the same effect either on performance or
intestinal bacterial counts. From the obtained results and the
forgoing discussion, it could be reported that if organic
acids mixtures were used correctly along with nutritional,
managerial and biosecurity measures, they can be a
powerful tool in maintaining the health of the
gastrointestinal tract of poultry, thus improving their
performances and successfully used as growth promoters. It
is well known that, antibiotics at sub-dosage could prevent
necrotic enteritis. Organic acids mixtures proved to have the
same effect on stabilizing the intestinal microflora.
However, in case of necrotic enteritis challenge organic
acids mixtures are not comparable with antibiotics at
therapeutic dosage. Further, studies are needed to compare
using organic acids mixture with antibiotics in different
experimental conditions.