Animal feed supplementation

[garrethdsouza]

Any studies or resources on animal feed supplementation particularly of nutrients, antibiotics too but that is a side issue. Which nutrients are supplemented for different livestock and to what amount? What amount of total supplements produced goes to animals?

[brimstoneSalad]

What angle are you after here? Environmental, or?

Any animals fed on largely corn are supplemented with Lysine by necessity. There are also a lot of minerals added to some feed.
Supplementation isn't very expensive or problematic for the environment, though, as far as I know.

[garrethdsouza]

Regarding vitamins etc. Not environment, just was arguing with a nonvegan that the only reason most have vitb12 is that it's part of the supplement and they're just getting the supplement from a more expensive and wasteful indirect method. Wanted to know how much evidence backs it up.

Also how much of total supplements goes to animals, because this would be yet another way of wasteful expenditure that could easily be directed to other efforts.