Feed Prebiotics Market Trends

Growth Drivers

• Government led reduction of antimicrobial use in animal feed: Public spending and regulatory enforcement to combat antimicrobial resistance are a core structural driver for the feed prebiotics. The governments increasingly fund surveillance enforcement and transition programs that restrict the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in livestock. The WHO and FAO jointly support the National AMR Action Plans, many of which directly affect the feed formulations. In the U.S., the FDA’s veterinary feed directive shifted medically important antibiotics to prescription-only status, increasing the demand for the non-antibiotic gut health inputs. The EU has backed similar transitions via the veterinary public health budgets and enforcement via the European Medicines Agency. From 2011 to 2022, the veterinary antimicrobial sales in the EU have reduced by 53%, based on the EMA report in November 2023. This data reflects the sustained regulatory pressure that continues through 2025. For feed manufacturers and integrators, this creates a long-term procurement shift toward prebiotic inclusion to maintain performance under the antibiotic-restricted regimes.
• Rising public investment in livestock disease prevention and biosecurity:  Governments are allocating animal health budgets towards the prevention rather than treatment, which indirectly supports the feed prebiotics market and the prebiotic demand. The FAO and national ministries emphasize the feed-based gut health management as a cost-effective disease mitigation strategy mainly for poultry and swine. The USDA reports that the endemic enteric diseases remain a leading cause of productivity loss, prompting sustained funding for animal health programs under the farm bill allocations. In the EU, the common agriculture policy funding increasingly prioritizes animal welfare and health resilience, favoring feed strategies that reduce morbidity. Preventive nutrition lowers the mortality and improves the feed efficiency, aligning with the government objectives to stabilize the domestic protein supply.
• Government animal health spending:  Sustained government spending on the animal health programs is a structural driver supporting demand for the feed prebiotics market. This spending reinforces a preventive, non-therapeutic approach to livestock disease management. The public allocation totaling USD 396 million in 2023 on the animal health technical services, avian, swine, cattle, and aquatic animal health indicates a clear policy priority towards the early disease control surveillance and productivity protection, based on the USDA 2025 report. Programs targeting avian health and swine health are mainly relevant as these species represent the highest commercial uptake of the gut health-oriented feed inputs due to the high-density production and early-life disease risk. The increased funding for the veterinary diagnostics and biologics further strengthens the preventive herd strategies, promoting the producers to stabilize the animal performance via the feed-based interventions rather than reactive treatments.

Animal Health Funding Allocations (2023-2025)

Source: USDA 2025

Challenges

• Stringent and evolving regulatory hurdles: Gaining market approval for the novel prebiotics is a major barrier in the market due to the rigorous region-specific regulations from bodies such as EFSA in Europe and the FDA in the U.S. These require extensive, costly dossier submissions to prove safety and efficacy for each animal species. Leading players in the market are investing significantly in a multi-year scientific program to secure the novel food approval for its chicory root fibers in various regions, demonstrating the lengthy lead times required for regulatory compliance. This process can delay the market entry by several years and increase the R&D costs substantially.
• Customer proof and demonstrated ROI: Convincing the feed millers and farmers to adopt prebiotics requires clear zootechnical proof of return on investment, such as the improved feed conversion ratios or reduced mortality. Generating this data requires long-term and expensive farm trials. Top players in the industry overcome this by providing extensive trial data and ROI calculators. Further, they demonstrate how their prebiotic solutions can surge the FCR in broilers, directly translating to feed cost savings per bird, which is a vital purchasing argument for cost-sensitive producers.