The benefits that biotechnology offers to animal health are enzymes. What are enzymes? They are proteins that act as accelerators of chemical reactions, synthesis and degradation of compounds. It has high specificity, so each type of enzyme connects to a single type of substance, the substrate on which it acts.

The adequate use of the enzymes allows an improvement in the use of the nutritional elements of the grains, making it more assimilable by the animal digestive system, allowing in return the production costs decrease, and making the livestock activity more profitable for the animals. Its use allows us to improve the use of our raw materials, as well as the use of other alternative ingredients in our countries to make the activity more profitable and not depend exclusively on external raw materials, therefore, to improve production efficiency.

There are different ways to obtain enzymes: a) Animal type such as trypsin, lipases and rennet. b) Plant type proteolytic like papain, bromelain. But the most abundant is the microbial, which highlights the phytases (60%), carbohydrases (30%), lipases and proteases

Xylanases (wheat) and b-glucanases (barley) are the most commonly used against cereal grains. As digestibility enhancers there are enzymes with the ability to hydrolyze the non-starch polysaccharides present in cereals, such as β-glucanases, xylanases, arabinoxylanases, cellulases, etc.

In the case of phytases, this enzyme has the ability to hydrolyse the phytic phosphorus present in cereals, so it can be considered as boosters of digestibility and the environment. Both pigs and birds can reduce the inclusion of inorganic phosphorus in diets and maintain the productive parameters, using appropriate phytases.

Based on the fact that one of the most expensive components that increase production costs is food, the inclusion of enzymes improves the nutritional availability of food, improving livestock productivity. Its use is closely linked to the age of the animals and their digestive system able to use more efficiently the nutrients provided in food, to achieve produce animals in the shortest time possible with further development and growth.

We still have to investigate the relationship between the use of enzymes as an improvement in digestibility to know its effect on the development of the intestine, along with the pronutrients and the improvement of the intestinal flora. All these aspects must be taken into consideration by nutritionists, universities, livestock farmers, industrialists and food processing companies in order to take advantage of biotechnology as an improvement in production, efficiency, animal health and food availability at reasonable prices.