Meet our new faculty: Alexander Yitbarek

The broiler industry on the Delmarva Peninsula feeds the world. Last year, the region’s poultry industry processed more than 4 billion pounds of chicken, which found its way to restaurants, grocery stores and kitchen tables.

Alexander Yitbarek of the University of Delaware says that as the world’s population continues to grow, people are turning to poultry as a crucial source of protein to eat. After all, he said, raising chickens for meat and eggs contributes less to climate change than raising beef or pork. Chickens produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of meat or per dozen eggs, require less land and water and have higher feed conversion efficiency.

“We are trying to ensure that we have sufficient supply with minimal impact on the environment,” Yitbarek said. “We do this, of course, by breeding healthy chickens, in addition to other sustainability measures that have a minimal impact on the environment.”

Yitbarek, who came to UD in January and is a new faculty member in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences, studies the health and biology of chickens. He investigates the effects of various feed additives and nutrients on the health and performance of chickens. He also conducts research into various diseases that affect the health, overall performance and welfare of chickens.

“If their gut is not healthy, they are not able to convert the nutrients they consume into protein,” says Yitbarek. “So we try to make sure that chickens have healthy intestines so that they can metabolize the nutrients from the feed we give them.”

A chicken with an infection in the intestines will use energy to get better, instead of using that energy to produce eggs or meat.

“You then have a compromised or imbalanced energy that goes toward maintaining their health instead of production,” Yitbarek said. “You need more energy to produce the meat and eggs we want.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Guidance for Industry #213, which went into effect on January 1, 2017, no longer allows livestock and poultry producers to use antibiotics as growth promoters. And antibiotics that are also used in human medicine must be prescribed by a veterinarian solely for the purpose of addressing disease.

“While the poultry industry began implementing measures to reduce antibiotic use well before the above guidelines, we are now dealing with re-emerging diseases because we used to be able to control these diseases with antibiotics in feed,” said Yitbarek.

That’s where Yitbarek’s research comes into play. He is working on finding alternatives to antibiotics that can keep chicken intestines healthy. Natural alternatives, such as probiotics, prebiotics, phytogens and others.

“We’re trying to see if we can make the gut healthy, replacing antibiotics,” Yitbarek said.

Yitbarek is designing a course called Gut Health of Domestic Animals (ANFS 467/667) to teach students what happens in a chicken’s intestines. The course covers issues such as how a chicken’s intestines absorb nutrients, what types of infections can compromise intestinal health, how the chicken responds to the infection, and how the host interacts with the beneficial microbes in the intestines.

In addition to his work on chicken intestinal health, Yitbarek also researches vaccines to protect poultry against viral and bacterial diseases.

Highly pathogenic bird flu, commonly known as bird flu, is highly contagious and fatal. Even if one chicken in a flock tests positive, the entire flock must be destroyed to prevent the virus from spreading. An ongoing outbreak of bird flu in the US began in 2022 and has affected more than 82 million birds that have died or been killed to keep the virus at bay. The outbreak is attributed to wild birds that can carry the virus and excrete it through their feces or saliva.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is working to identify vaccines for the current strain of bird flu that it can distribute to commercial poultry. Yitbarek said next-generation vaccine technologies, such as those used to create vaccines that protect people against COVID-19, could have a similar application for bird flu.

“We also want to bring that technology to the poultry sector,” he said. “In addition to inactivated, live-attenuated and recombinant vaccine platforms, our laboratory is interested in using next-generation vaccine platforms such as vector- and nucleotide-based vaccine technologies.”

Yitbarek said he was drawn to UD and the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources because of its focus on poultry – Delaware’s most important agricultural sector. On the Newark campus, the university has the Charles C. Allen Jr. Biotechnology Laboratory, a world-class facility that researches and diagnoses poultry diseases. And at Georgetown, the university has a Lasher Laboratory that can quickly test and diagnose chickens for diseases. Allen Lab in particular has a biosafety level 3 status, meaning it works with more dangerous pathogens. The world-class laboratory continues to attract prominent researchers to UD.

“Having this lab within walking distance is not something you see often on a college campus,” Yitbarek said.