WHY DOES IT WORK? - Technical Commentary
Douglas W. Fodge, Ph.D. - South East Asian Distributor
Postdoctoral
University of California at Berkeley
Dept. of Molecular Biology and Virology
Ph.D.
University of North Texas
Biology and Comparative Biochemistry
MS & BS
Texas A&M University, Commerce Campus
Biology, Botany & Biochemistry
Perhaps my decision-making process leading to the distribution of AZOMITE
is worth recounting here.
Although the product had been available for several years, a very large
number of scientists scoffed at the idea that it could possibly be beneficial
to plants and animals, and that group included me. I can clearly recall
the day, in approximately 1996, that I first heard about AZOMITE. At
the time I was the Vice President of a Biotech company here in the USA,
and in a planning session at that company one of our salesmen told us
about it. [Just for the record, I helped to found the Biotechnology
industry in the USA so I am familiar with developing unproven products
and technologies and turning them into something of considerable value.]
We scientists had a good laugh about the concept of the product and
wondered aloud, while scoffing and chuckling, why anyone in their right
mind would buy such a product, as it would be totally unavailable to
plants and animals.
After my retirement from that company and subsequent reentry into business,
I met Wes Emerson, the President of the Azomite company at a scientific
conference, and he introduced me to some of the things that they had
learned about the product. Wes also gave me the name of a senior poultry
nutritionist, Dr. Wayne McWard, retired from Continental Grain's Wayne
Poultry Division, who had sanctioned the product through various tests
and then used the product in their commercial feeds. I went immediately
to visit Dr. McWard and was told that the product provided them with
increased poultry meat on the same amount of feed as birds that did
not receive the product, and he also told me that he had no earthly
idea of why or how the product worked. Afterwards, I consulted with
two trusted scientists/businessmen advisors to my newly formed company,
and then the three of us talked to the Wes about the business. After
this discussion, we concluded that it might be worth a try to sell this
product since I would not have to make much investment in order to get
started and I had little to lose following a lengthy successful career
elsewhere.
I have now handled AZOMITE for the last 4 years, and have I ever been
shocked by what I have learned. I guess we are never too old to learn
some new things. We scientists were wrong about AZOMITE; about as wrong
as one could possibly be about something. Moreover, there are basic
scientists, animal nutritionists and plant physiologists all over the
USA and elsewhere who have overlooked the value of this mineral for
decades, and some still overlook it. It was only when someone without
a scientific background (Wes) included it in animal feeds and in the
soil did the many marvelous things that it does for plants and animals
come to the forefront. At this point, I sell several products, some
hightech and some lowtech, and AZOMITE is by far the best selling product
in my collection. There is hardly a week that passes without someone
from some company calling to inquire about the availability of the product
for their company, if not to be distributors for their country.
An additional paragraph would be required to list the many species
of plants and animals that have tested postive when presented with this
product. AZOMITE sells itself, and the only trick is to be convincing
enough to get someone to make the first test with it at their facility.
Once they do the first test, their response is often like the two eMails
I received this morning: one from China and one from Sulawesi, Indonesia.
The Chinese group was happy to report that the wine grapes on AZOMITE
had much more flavor compounds etc. and the other from Sulawesi reported
that one or more chili pepper producers on that island had reproduced
our test results in their test plots, and that they wished to conduct
a much larger test (4 HA) with the product in chili pepper production
to make sure that the results were due to the product. Am I ever glad
that I took AZOMITE on as a product!
First off, AZOMITE™ is a very complicated
product in the sense that it contains 67 + chemical elements, most in
oxide form. Since the product is a natural volcanic ash, albeit 30 million
years old, it has been Certified for Organic, achieved GRAS status for
use in animal feeds and other status that unnatural products have not
been able to attain.
As you know oxides of metals are soluble in dilute acid, the solubility
varying of course from metallic element to metallic element, but nonetheless
most are soluble to some extent. Thus, I suspect that the product provides
some amounts of metallic elements for animals as the micronized form
of the product soaks in dilute acid in the gastric phase of digestion.
However, when I have examined the trace mineral (mostly metallic elements)
requirements of chickens and pigs, for example, and compared those requirements
to the amount of them that AZOMITE™ at 0.5% inclusion levels would contribute to the diets, I have concluded
that the product can not be the sole source of trace elements for those
animals. This has caused me to examine other things that are in AZOMITE™,
and this is where it really has become interesting because AZOMITE™ contains materials that have largely been ignored here in the West,
but not in Australia and China.
For example, the Rural Industries Research & Development Corporation
of Australia has investigated the potential to use Lanthanum (a rare
earth element obtained from mining operations) to stimulate the production
of agriculture species (http://www.rirdc.gov.au/reports/Ras/01-145.pdf)
and concluded that this element will stimulate performance in plants,
particularly when the crops are under various kinds of stresses. To
start their project RIRDC staff visited with Chinese officials to learn
how that country used such materials, as the latter have strewn slag
heaps from mines on their farm land forever. The Chinese claimed that
10-15% improvement in vegetable and crop productivity's were achieved;
however, the Chinese did not remove toxic contaminants from the slag
heaps and may now be observing long term toxicity in people due to including
Cd, Pb etc. in the practices. Interestingly enough, pure La, Ce, and
Pr give a huge boost to hogs He and Rambeck 2000/ Arch. Tierenahr
53(4): 323-334. However, the purchase of pure La, Ce, Pr would be
very expensive, but AZOMITE™ contains
about 600 mg/kg of La, Ce and Pr, and in exactly the same ratio as used
for the hog work. It was interesting that La alone did not provide as
much stimulation as the combination of the 3, which worked marvelously
well.
I have been examining the scientific literature for information about
the rare earths, and I have learned that La is a Calcium antagonist
at high dosage (about 10-50 fold higher dose than in AZOMITE™ at 0.5% inclusion level). However, I have also learned that the rare
earths are exceptional substances and indeed they do have an impact
on many processes at the biochemical level, including not the least
of which is the immune system. I have gone back through much of the
experimental R&D about AZOMITE™, and
I found a study conducted by Dr. Mark Cook, University of Wisconsin
- he has a joint appointment in the Medical School and Animal Science.
In the main part of his study (conducted years ago) Dr. Cook examined
the ability of various products to counter the destructive impact of
several mycotoxins. However, I wasn't too interested in that part of
his study although AZOMITE™ performed
very well, but I examined his report, and I found something quite interesting.
Dr. Cook did some studies in mycotoxin-free feeds using young chickens
in battery cages, essentially Controls for the mycotoxin studies. There
were four test groups that had the following added to a basal feed:
Sand Control, Sodium Bentonite, Calcium Bentonite and AZOMITE™.
At 16 days of age, he injected chickens in each of the 4 groups with
SRBCs (sheep red blood cells) to stimulate the immune system and then
bled the animals 5 or 6 days later. In the blood sera, he measured the total antibody (Ab) and specific IgG responses directed toward
the SRBCs. In the first three groups there were no significant differences
in either the antibody level or the IgG level, but in marked contrast
both AB and IgG levels were doubled in the AZOMITE™ over the other three groups. In the US the product is used in poultry,
and they observe improved weight gain, F/G improvements and many also
observe improved yield (WOG and breast meat) with it in their feeds.
Both of these examples, are evidence that something in AZOMITE™ stimulates protein synthesis.
That is where the rubber hit the road, so to speak. The Rare Earth
Elements, at least the lower molecular ones that are found in AZOMITE™,
stimulate a peptidyl transferase (an enzyme) that is critical to protein
synthesis in all cells. In fact, this very enzyme is inhibited by several
mycotoxins, especially some of the most potent such as cylcopiazonic
acid, but not all mycotoxins! I have asked myself the question(s), could
it be that AZOMITE™ can stimulate cells
in both the absence and in the presence of mycotoxins, and in particular
can it stimulate the immune system specifically? I don't know the answer
to my own question(s), but I am in the process (with Peak Minerals-Azomite,
Inc. support) of investigating and trying to find answers.
If indeed the product has a specific impact on the immune system of
animals, then we really do have an interesting product, and it would
also be instructive about how to test the product. I have been told
by the Peak Minerals-Azomite staff that they have observed positive
impacts in poultry only when the poultry are grown on built-up litter
and almost nothing when the animals are grown on clean, fresh litter
in steam-sterilized test facilities. Putting the two together suggests
that a large impact of the product is probably due to helping the animals
overcome a sub-lethal immunological challenge when they are grown on
the built up litter. Thus, I would recommend that you test the product
under conditions in which the animals are challenged.
If you examined the www.azomite.com,
you saw that the product has positive impacts on a large spectrum of
living species. The range includes invertebrates, plants, animals and
protists. In particular, the size of the impact of the product in the
invertebrates is beyond anything I have seen in my 40 years in the business
- a nice way to end one's career (although I'm not through yet!).
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