When Lance Baumgard first started working with the Arizona dairy industry, he quickly noticed the existing dogma around metabolic disease, inflammatory disease, and animal productivity didn’t stack up. Questioning why the aggressive attempts to treat metabolic disease over the previous 30 years had led to no reduction in disease incidence he concluded that the industry could be focusing on the symptoms rather than the cause. Cellular health is key to maintaining productivity and profitability in agricultural systems. When Lance began leveraging cross species scientific data and adjusted his focus to infectious disease and the resulting inflammation, things started to make much more sense. The energetic demands of managing inflammation and all forms of inflammatory disease frequently contribute to the snowballing negative impact these diseases have on our farm animals, pets, and ourselves.  Early diagnosis of immune activation and the resulting inflammation is critical.  Failure to do so has significant animal welfare, environmental, productivity, and farm profitability impacts.  I recently caught up with Lance to hear more about his work. You can listen to his conversation here.