Swine convert co-products from food and biofuel industries into animal protein for food

Abstract

As omnivores, pigs are ideally suited to convert non human-edible feedstuffs into high quality food animal protein. Dietary inclusion of co-products from food and bio-fuel production will considerably improve the human-edible protein balance (edible protein output/input) of swine production. Compared with traditional diets based on a single grain as an energy source and soybean meal as a protein source, feeding high inclusion levels of co-products has a greater risk. This risk can be managed using modern feed formulation, feed evaluation, feed enzymes, and feed processing to attain predictable swine growth performance, carcass characteristics, and pork quality. Dietary inclusion of co-products reduces feed cost per unit of pork produced and is part of an effort to create sustainable swine production systems. Fast adoption of feeding co-products is driven by unprecedented high corn and soybean meal prices.