Role
Emily Burton is a Director of the Safety and Sustainability Strategic Research Theme and Professor of Sustainable Food Production who leads the University’s poultry nutrition research team. She undertakes a blend of teaching, research and advisory roles relating to the safety and sustainabilty of food systems
Career overview
Prof Burton gained a BSc in Animal Physiology and Nutrition from the University of Leeds and a PhD in the nutritional value of soya beans for broiler chicks from the University of Nottingham. She spent seven years as a post-doctoral researcher mainly focusing on feed quality and exogenous enzyme effects on broiler performance, but also briefly investigating the capacity of fibrolytic enzymes to improve forage digestion in dairy cows.
After a spending two years as the companion bird nutritionist for Mars at their Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition, Dr Burton established a new poultry research unit at Nottingham Trent University in 2009.
Research areas
Prof Burton's research primarily focuses on interactions between feed materials and gastrointestinal physiology in poultry. She has particular interest in optimising the nutritional value of industrial co-products for use in poultry diets, methods of inactivating anti-nutritional factors in plant materials, bone development in poultry and the role of nutrition in reducing the environmental impact of poultry production.
Opportunities to carry out postgraduate research towards PhD exist in all the areas identified above and further information may be obtained from the NTU Doctoral School.
External activity
- Chairs World’s Poultry Science Association European Working Group on Nutrition. This group organises the European Poultry Nutrition Symposium – a meeting considered by many to be the leading source on the future direction of this sector for both academics and practitioners around the world.
- Council member of the World’s Poultry Science Association (WPSA) UK Branch and chairs the Programme Committee of their annual meeting which is jointly held with the British Society for Animal Science (BSAS) annual meeting.
- Council member of British Society for Animal Science (BSAS) and an ambassador of their Academia Association.
- Led organisation of the 2014 Poultry Science Symposium on Sustainable Poultry Production in Europe and subsequently edited a book on the same topic which is now available from CABI.
Sponsors and collaborators
Current and recent research is being conducted with the collaboration, funding and / or support of:
Publications
My outputs are always updated on our repository
Press expertise
- Resilent food systems
- Sustainable Food Production
- Poultry production
- Insect farming
Press
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NEWS
Project awarded £3 Million to power poultry welfare and sustainability
6 September 2024A new £3 million project aims to address significant health and welfare issues in poultry production.
ntu.ac.uk/about-us/news/news-articles/2024/09/project-awarded-3-million-to-power-poultry-welfare-and-sustainability
Much of my work focuses on using animal nutrition as a tool to promote sustainable food production. I have projects focusing on the nutritional factors contributing to healthy bone development in fast-growing production animals, and also in humans too, via our research into bioavailable silica as a food supplement.
My interest in bone development also spans across to environmental sustainability too: by seeking ways to maximise the release of plant-bound phosphorus, we are able to reduce global use of mined mineral phosphates in animal feeds.
Our group also supports a number of projects that seek to reduce reliance on imported protein sources such as soya, and replace them with locally produced materials that do not form part of the 'feed-fuel-food debate', where crops are diverted from direct entry to the human food chain into other, less efficient forms of global resource consumption by humans.
All our research is conducted both with industry and for industry: with industry support, we have a sound understanding of the challenges faced in the animal feed sector, and we are then able to develop effective solutions through our research.
