ISSUE FOCUS 34 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE March 2023 had values below the minimum tolerance limit of 45% of protein - that is, a general assessment of the quality of the ingredient can directly impact on a smaller variation in the levels nutrients used during the formulation of the feed products. THE IMPACT OF VARIABILITY IN FEED FORMULATION As we mentioned earlier in this article, animal feed factories must adopt a collaboration-based approach between formulation and quality management. When preparing feed and food formulations, nutritionists and formulators must have complete statistics to know the nutritional values of the ingredients, so that a safe update of the nutritional matrix can be done and the nutritional recommendations of all the nutrients of the animals from which they are formulating the product can be met. In addition, having the nutritional matrix of the ingredients updated is important cost-wise, as the variability can impact the profitability of the business and also ensure the guaranteed levels. If we analyze only animal by-products, such as Meat and Bone Meal (MBM), we see a great variation in their nutritional levels. With that being said, it’s highly recommended to adopt a batch-to-batch formulation; otherwise, the solution is to have a robust database with nutrient analysis of raw materials and use the average and standard deviation found to define the ideal nutritional value to use. In an increasingly rapid costs of ingredients scenario, strict monitoring of nutritional and food matrices has a deep impact in leverage production efficiency and cost reduction. Let's get practical here. We have gathered the results of Crude Protein analysis of Meat and Bone Meal (MBM) of different batches that a pet food company received during the period of 60 days. The figure below shows all the values for this analysis that were found via NIRS - with the control chart it is possible to evaluate the average found (43.0599%) and a high standard deviation (± 8.2591). Additionally, we drew a red line to show the value used by the customer (42%) to perform the product formulations during production batches for this period. In short, certain batches of feed production used crude protein values for MBM higher than the value used in the formulation (yellow highlighted area). For those batches, they had an excess of protein in the feed, resulting in a cost increase that could be avoided. On the other hand, in batches that used crude protein values for MBM lower than the values used Meat and Bone Meal Analyses for Crude Protein (Image adapted from Optimal’s Labinfy platform, February 2023)
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