POULTRYINDONESIA, Jakarta – Indonesia known as second mega-biodiversity country has abundant variety of flora and fauna. As habitat for 30.000 species of medicinal plants, Indonesian ancestor have been used this natural resource as traditional medicine a long time ago. This proved by Temple’s relief as well as traditional equipment to produce herbal medicine. The knowledge to utilize medicinal plant bequeathed from one generation to another or empirically. This herbal medicine has been used for maintain human and animal’s health.

Poultry Industry, known as the largest supplier for animal source protein in Indonesia shows a rapid development for the last decade. Moreover, the consumption of poultry product predicted will be increase along with greater economy status and population. This also implicated to high demand of poultry product which should be safe, healthy, whole, and halal or known as ASUH. Therefore, this trend should become a booster for Poultry Industry to conduct research, stock, and development of new product as antibiotic growth promoter (AGP) replacement.

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Recently, herbal based product or so called phytobiotic in Indonesia start to grow. Some poultry farmers start to realize harmful effect of overused antibiotic in livestock sector, especially poultry industry to both human and animal’s health. Therefore, they decide to explore for AGP replacement with herbal products. Indeed, this herbal products development in Indonesia are slower rather than another natural product such as probiotic, prebiotic, and enzyme, proven by only small number of local herbal products producer.

Government, companies, and researcher as three main pillars to support the development of herbal products in poultry industry should make a strong cooperation between each party in order to promote the growth of herbal products from Indonesia. As valuable natural assets of Indonesia, herbal products from indigenous plants could boost economic situation and the availability of healthy animal products for Indonesian society.  Esti