EUROPE is short of protein to feed its livestock, particularly our pigs and poultry. The problem with them is that they have stomachs similar to ours and require highly digestible forms of protein. Ruminants like cattle and sheep on the other hand can make use of a number of cheaper protein sources, such as urea, that would be indigestible to non-ruminant pigs and poultry.

Urea is a non-protein nitrogen compound, commonly fed to ruminants, where the nitrogen is used as the building block for the production of protein by microbes that live in the rumen and subsequently digested.

Currently the market for pig and poultry protein sources is dominated by imported soy bean meal, or soya as we call it, which is the residue left after the oil has been crushed from the beans.

A good source of readily digestible protein for pigs and poultry is fishmeal, although there can be issues with "fishy taint" if care is not taken when feeding it. While feeding fishmeal to pigs and poultry is perfectly legal, it is banned from ruminant rations in the EU as a result of the BSE debacle. Feeding meat and bone meal from cattle to cattle led to the spread of "mad cow disease" - so the practice of feeding meat and bone meal, as well as fishmeal to ruminants was banned.

Back in 2011 the European Parliament supported the EU Commission's proposals to relax the rules that control the use of animal protein in feed. The idea was to permit pig and poultry protein to be used in non-ruminant animal feed, while maintaining the ban on cattle and sheep protein.

The proposal to feed pig and poultry processed animal protein (PAP) involves feeding meat and bone meal from one species to another - bits of pigs to poultry, and vice versa.

The driver for this, as always was money. The EU is only 40 per cent self sufficient in protein animal feed, forcing up commodity prices. Fortunately the idea stalled in Europe as a result of difficulties developing accurate tests.

There were concerns about cross contamination that could have led to feeding pig PAP to pigs, or poultry PAP to poultry, which would not have been allowed. The feed mills were also unhappy because of the level of separation that would be needed, while the industry was concerned about public perception.

Then there was the practice of feeding dried poultry muck (DPM) to beef cattle that I employed when I started farming over 40 years ago. While it is no longer fed to cattle in the UK because it was identified as a botulism risk, along with other health concerns, the practice is still used elsewhere in the world.

DPM or poultry litter is commonly fed to all classes of beef cattle on the American continent. While it is a low energy feed, similar to average quality hay, it is high in protein (20-35 per cent). Bacteria in the rumen of the cattle convert it into digestible protein - in much the same way as with urea - that is subsequently digested.

Mind you, there is another new source of protein waiting in the wings for EU approval. Research into the development of insect protein for fish and poultry is well advanced and recent trials indicate there shouldn't be a problem allowing the use of insect larvae-based proteins in animal feed supplements.

Maggots from the house fly, Musca domestica, are mass produced on pig and poultry manures and other waste such as draff (the mash left after brewing and distilling). Eggs are produced from adult flies in a separate facility and then seeded into the waste matter to hatch into maggots or larvae. As the larvae leave the waste to pupate, they empty their guts, and at this stage are ideal for harvesting.

The resulting meal is a natural constituent of pig and hen diets.

Now a high-protein feed derived from natural gas is being trialled in Danish pig rations. Calculated at 72.9 per cent crude protein, the feed is produced by methanotrophic bacteria, and will be targeted mainly at the pig and poultry sectors.

The methanotrophic process relies on a bacterial culture using natural gas as a carbon and energy source, producing "clean water" as a waste product. It has been approved as an animal feed in the EU since 1995 and was added to the EU feed catalogue in 2011 for all animals and fish.

ENDS