Dr. Bradley working on Evonik’s meat quality research project at the University of Illinois.
After the Midwest ASAS meetings in Madison, Wisconsin, Evonik hosted the industry’s leading nutritionists and researchers in the North American Swine Industry. The seminar aimed to discuss swine nutrition’s current and future challenges in optimizing animal performance and health while reducing the industry’s environmental footprint and profitability.
To start the seminar, Evonik’s Dr. John Htoo and Henrique Brand discussed key strategies for reducing crude protein in swine diets and optimizing sow and piglet performance. Then, Dr. Jerry Shurson discussed his laboratory’s work on evaluating the overall environmental footprint in pork production systems, comparing it from a county, state, national, and global perspective. After a short networking break, Carina Scheer, Evonik’s Applied Technology Manager Membranes, discussed the innovative solution that Evonik has developed to scrub or capture carbon emissions from manure slurry. Lastly, Dan Tyndall with Roeslein Alternative Energy discussed the ongoing efforts of the renewal natural gas project for the swine industry in the USA.
The seminar attendees were able to learn how Evonik is leading the way in animal nutrition and sustainability through its innovation and collaboration strategies within the swine industry. Check out Dr. Bradley’s key takeaways from the seminar below!
Table 1. Overview of speakers and presentation from Evonik’s Swine Nutrition Seminar.
| Speaker | Presentation |
| Dr. John Htoo
Director Technical Consultancy Evonik Operations GmbH |
Critical factors to successfully reduce dietary Crude protein in swine diets – impact on performance, health and economics |
| Henrique Brand
Technical Service Manager Evonik Brazil |
Nutritional strategies to optimize sow and piglet performance and gut health |
| Dr. Jerry Shurson
Professor University of Minnesota |
Nutritional strategies to reduce the Nitrogen and environmental footprint in pork production systems |
| Carina Scheer
Applied Technology Manager Membranes Evonik Corporation |
Generation of biogas from swine manure and technologies to upgrade it into valuable RNG |
| Dan Tyndall
Director of Technology Roeslein Alternative Energy |
Renewal natural gas project development for the swine industry in the US |
Key Take-a-ways
Dr. John Htoo – Reducing Crude Protein
- Low Crude Protein diets combined with different by-products can create substantial feed cost savings without impacting performance.
- When formulating Low Crude Protein Diets, it is essential to formulate both essential and nonessential amino acids on a Net Energy basis.
- Do not feed more than a 6.9% SID Lysine: Crude Protein ratio.
- 1% of Crude Protein reduction equates to approximately 9% reduction in excreted Nitrogen and a 3% reduction in water intake.
Henrique Brand – Functional Nutrition and Feed Additives
- Functional amino acid nutrition is not just about sow and piglet body weight gain, but placenta function.
- Arginine and Glutamine are strategic functional amino acids in late gestation to reduce low viability pigs and improve piglet birth weights.
- Guanidinoacetic acid also indicates advantages for piglet body weight and growth during lactation. But there must also be sufficient methionine and cysteine supplementation as methyl donors for creatine formation.
Dr. Jerry Shurson – Environmental Footprint
- Globally only 20% of Nitrogen inputs are captured in products. However, the swine industry’s N efficiency is 41%.
- Multi-objective feed formulation must include biosecurity, least-cost formulation, and sustainability.
- Geographic location significantly influences LCA inputs more than just an entire industry. Production of specific proteins needs to be considered based on the regionality of inputs.
Carina Scheer – Biogas Conversion
- The swine industry has a huge opportunity to utilize its waste products to recapture bio-methane for sustainability and profitability.
- A 3-stage membrane system could recapture greater than 99.5% of the bio-methane.
- This renewable natural gas can be up to $1/day/pig in a large enough operation.
Dan Tyndall – Theory into Practice
- A renewable natural gas (RNG) project will take multiple businesses working together to be successful.
- These integrated and sustainable partnerships bring together food, human health, the environment, job creation, and diversification for the rural community.
- Environmental benefits of RNG are decreased greenhouse gas and nitrogen emissions, increased soil health, habitat preservation, and pollution reduction.
- Still, there are many hurdles to scaling the technology down for smaller producers and from planning to execution.
Casey L. Bradley, Ph.D. – President
The Sunswine Group
+1 479-366-8488
|casey.bradley@thesunswinegroup.com
