Response of the Chicken Pancreas to Raw Soybeans

Abstract

CHERNICK et al. (1948) showed that the prolonged feeding of raw soybean (RS) diets to one-week-old chicks caused an enlargement of the pancreases with an increased proteolytic activity as compared with chicks fed heated soybean diets (HS). Methionine increased the growth of the chicks fed the raw soybean diets but did not counteract the hypertrophy of the pancreas nor the increase in proteolytic activity. Subsequently it has been shown that chickens fed RS diet without prior adaptation to the RS diet showed greatly decreased proteases in the intestinal contents due to the action of the soybean trypsin inhibitor (Furuta and Lepkovsky, unpublished data). After adaptation to the RS for six weeks, the intestinal contents of these chickens contained as much proteases as that of those fed the HS diets. Presumably, the pancreases of the chickens adapted to the RS released enough proteases to maintain normal levels of proteases in…