Page 18 - Pork Newspaper - February 2018

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CLIMATE CONTROL | AUTOMATIC FEEDING | HOUSING
www.metrowest.com.au Dave Ahlquist 0419 860 162
Proteins for pigs derived from the sea
☛ from P17
digestibility of crude pro-
tein in starfish meal is 0.80.
Two growth perform- ance experiments have been conducted on star- fish for pigs.
The first showed 5 per- cent but not 10 percent starfish meal could be fed to piglets, which were in- dividually housed under experimental conditions; and the second confirmed that 5 percent but not 7.5 percent starfish meal could be fed to piglets housed under commercial conditions.
Seaweed
Asia produces 99 per- cent of the 25 million tonnes of fresh seaweed
produced annually world- wide.
In Europe, the greatest production is in Norway and France.
European seaweed is often collected manually from natural habitats but can also be cultivated on farms in a laborious rope- based facility.
The use of seaweed is primarily for human con- sumption, either as intact seaweed or as extracts.
The potential of sea- weed production is very dependent on the qual- ity of sea water, which should have high salinity, low temperature and low nutrient concentration to allow clear water for sun- light.
nates, fucoidans and lam- inarins and polyphenols in brown algae and the galactans and xylans in green algae displays some interesting bioactive prop- erties, which can be uti- lised in maintaining good health status in livestock.
It is therefore of great importance that the bioac- tive compounds are taken into account when pro- cessing seaweed into their final products.
Find out more about some of the protein al- ternatives for soy that are currently seen as promis- ing for livestock and fish diets.
Processing into feed- stuffs
Mussels, starfish and seaweed need to be pro- cessed before they can be stored.
Production into dry meal is a well-known pre- serving method, but also making the products into acidic silage may be in- teresting.
There are, however, great challenges.
Starfish and seaweed are fairly simple to dry when using existing industrial technologies.
Drying and grinding starfish at a fishmeal fac- tory is a well-known pro- cess to produce starfish meal.
Blue mussels are more difficult to handle be- cause of their shells.
When used for pig feed, the meat should be sepa- rated from the shell frac- tion, but there may be a potential use of a shell- containing mussel product for poultry.
Removal of shells can efficiently be done by boiling, which is a well- known process with mus- sels for human consump- tion.
In the boiling process, there is risk of losing both protein and lipids.
Other processing meth- ods to remove shells can be based on physical sep- aration by, for example, sedimentation of crushed fresh mussels or screw pressing of the fresh mus- sels, enzymatic processes, or dry fractionation.
In Sweden, work on pro- cessing blue mussels into meal has resulted in a pat- ent on separation of meat and shells by a tempera-
ture-mediated hydrolysis.
Not drying, but present- ing it wet
An alternative to a dry mussel meal product can be a wet silage product stabilised by organic acids, also known from salmon-based products.
Experiences from drying starfish show the product is sensitive to tempera- ture and the starfish meal becomes very dark at too- high temperatures, indi- cating Maillard reactions, in which especially lysine becomes unavailable to the animal.
Addition of organic acids to the fresh and minced mussels and a fol- lowing stirring process re- sults in a silage with a part hydrolysis of the protein fraction into free amino acids and peptides.
This has in blue mussels increased the standard- ised ileal digestibility of crude protein to 0.86 in mussel silage compared to 0.83 in mussel meal.
Starfish are not suitable for acid hydrolysis be- cause of their high content of calcium carbonate.
Making silage by lactic acid bacteria fermentation may result in positive ef- fects on the composition of gut microbiota.
Seaweed is relatively easy to ferment because of its high concentration of carbohydrates.
The fermentation of in- tact sugar kelp into pig feed has been commer- cialised by the Danish company Fermentation Experts.
Starfish are easy to han- dle at fish meal factories but it may be difficult to process starfish at such facilities because of low tonnage and a fishing sea- son overlapping with the traditional fishery.
Therefore, alternative processing methods may be relevant.
It appears, however, that the physical characteristics of starfish makes them dif- ficult to handle when they are minced using a screw press, which would other- wise produce a protein-rich liquid fraction for use in liquid pig feeding and a dry pulp fraction to be used as fertiliser.
Jan V. Nørgaard
Assoc Prof, Aarhus Uni- versity, Denmark
These
conditions determine the annual production in the range from three to 30 tonnes fresh weight per hectare of seaweed farm. Nutritional content of different seaweed spe- cies
The concentration of nu- trients varies according to species.
Sugar kelp and sea let- tuce are considered to have the greatest produc- tion potential in Danish waters.
Sugar kelp is a brown algae that is characterised to contain 14-38 percent ash in dry matter and a crude protein concentra- tion of 7-13 percent in dry matter.
The concentration of so- dium, potassium and io- dine is high.
Sea lettuce is a green algae with typically more than 15 percent crude pro- tein and an amino acid profile close to that of soybean meal.
Sea lettuce has high concentrations of sulphur, calcium, magnesium, so- dium and chloride.
Based on these key fig- ures of nutrient content, it’s obvious that seaweed in general can barely be termed a protein source.
The content of the algi-
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Page 18 – Australian Pork Newspaper, February 2018
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