# Antioxidant and Antimicrobial Properties of Selected Phytogenics for Sustainable Poultry Production
## 5 Contribution of Phytogenics to Environmental Health and Food Security  
Food security has four dimensions, including (1) availability--national, (2) accessibility --household, (3) utilization--individual, and (4) stability. To achieve full food security, all four dimensions must be intact [133], which is still a major challenge in most low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Rapid human population growth, poverty, the COVID-19 pandemic, and climate change, with its concomitant recurrent droughts [134], are among the major factors that exacerbate food insecurity. Ironically, over 80% of households in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) practice poultry farming with predominantly indigenous poultry breeds [135]. However, they have not yet been sufficiently exploited to alleviate food insecurity. This current scenario, therefore, provides an opportunity to explore sustainable strategies to ensure poultry intensification in the sub-continent. To meet the increasing global demand for nutritious food, the poultry industry, which contributed 40.6% of total meat production (337.3 million tons) in 2020 [136], must be sustainably intensified. However, poultry intensification raises significant concerns about environmental sustainability. This is because intensive poultry production depends on external inputs, primarily comprising monoculturally produced feed ingredients such as maize and soybean, whose production is associated with serious environmental impact issues, including climate change, deforestation, and loss of biodiversity [137]. In addition, broiler chickens excrete enormous amounts of unutilized nitrogen and phosphorus into the environment annually, which, if mismanaged, leads to environmental manure [138], atmospheric ammonia pollution [139], and eutrophication and its induction of aquatic hypoxia and harmful algal blooms [140]. Thus, improved nutrient utilization efficiency in birds consuming diets with phytogenic products could have positive environmental consequences by reducing the nutrient pollution of poultry wastes. Furthermore, the use of phytogenic plants as feed additives results in improvements in protein digestibility, which further leads to the greater utilization of dietary amino acids and a reduction in the excretion of nitrogenous compounds [141]. As a result, the use of phytogenic feed additives lowers the emissions from poultry production. In addition, the anti-microbial effects of phytogenic feed additives result in lower ammonia release. This is achieved by a reduction of Gram-negative bacteria and an increase in the beneficial bacterial activities in the hindgut of poultry, leading toincreased formation of volatile fatty acids in excreta, a lower slurry pH, and consequently, the reduction of ammonia emissions [142]. In addition, the usage of antibiotics in intensified poultry farms can accelerate the spread of antibiotic resistance genes in the environment [9; 10; 142; 143]. Therefore, sustainable poultry intensification could be a strategy to enhance food security, particularly in SSA, without causing catastrophic damage to the ecosystem, such as the feeding of phytogenic feed additives. The use of phytogenic compounds could provide a more environmentally friendly, lower-cost solution for improving food and nutrition security while also benefiting poultry consumers' health. This will, in turn, meet the demand for animal protein and, ultimately, reduce hunger and food insecurity, even in low-income countries. This would also ensure that consumers have access to healthy poultry products that are free of antibiotic residues, and as such, comply with the goal of achieving good health and well-being. The antimicrobial properties of these phytogenics could also reduce the amount of carbon and methane that is released into the environment, which could contribute to the goal of combatting climate change. Moreover, phytogenics have probiotic, prebiotic, and antibiotic activities that can reduce pathogenic bacterial infections and help reduce disease outbreaks, thus promoting food safety.