Food By-product preservation
Preserving the nutritional value of food by-products is essential to maintaining this production stream of highly suitable ingredients for animal feed. However, preventing deterioration of food by-products can be challenging due to conditions favourable for microbes to proliferate.
Increasing awareness
Food producers are increasingly aware of the need to carefully use our resources to meet the needs of a growing global population. Using nutritional by-products from the food industry as animal feed can result in more sustainable animal protein production and less waste. As a result, preventing microbes from consuming valuable nutrients in food by-products has become an important issue in ensuring their suitability for inclusion in animal feed.
The impact on the farmer
Traditionally, most by-products are lost to landfills, biogas production, or, less frequently, used in animal feed production based on dry-matter rather than nutritional value.
If untreated, within seven days of storage, microbial proliferation will decrease the level of dry matter by as much as 30%.
This points to an enormous potential to maintain economic value and safeguard nutrient availability for the animal by preserving the integrity of food by-products.