INSIDE AN ANT'S STOMACH

Such techniques are indeed now being developed in various parts of the world by petroleum refiners, but there is at least one company that has been marketing petroleumderived livestock feeds for many years: the Feed Service Corporation of Crete, Nebraska.

The company was founded in 1951 and now has a near complete technology for feeding normal propanol, obtainable from the hydrocarbon pool, and urea to beef, dairy cattle and sheep. These food supplements have been shown to lead to exceptionally high quality of meat and milk.

"While others are producing microbial crops by feeding micro-organisms on hydrocarbons, harvesting and purifying the protein therefrom," says FCS President Anderson, "we find that the best way to introduce energy from our carbohydrogen reserves into our human food chain is to feed propanol and urea supplements directly to our domestic animals."

FSC President Philip C. Anderson is an astute scientist who has, for example, worked out a new method of determining the molecular energies of chemical compounds (which will shortly appear in the Journal of Applied Spectroscopy).

Perhaps even more dramatic is the work done by the FSC Labs in analyzing exactly what goes on in the rumina of animals that can, unlike human stomachs, digest cellulose and other roughage. Using advanced microscopic techniques, the FSC Labs have studied the bacteria and microflora that do the actual digesting of the food inside a cow's rumen.

Much the same microflora is present in the stomachs of termites, which can all too well digest wood and other cellulose. Deprived of this microflora, a termite dies of starvation just as a human would if he were reduced to eating wood. FSC's petroleum-derived food supplements cause this microflora inside cattle and sheep stomachs to make a better job of digesting the feedstuffs. (For details, write FSC, Box 270, Crete, NB 68333.)

In cooperation with the University of California at Davis, FSC has actually filmed the microscopic process of digesting cellulose. The film, hailed by critics as "deserving an Oscar," shows not only the inside of a rumen, but also the digestion of wood inside a termite's stomach.

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