ISSUE FOCUS 52 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE December 2025 claims in their pet foods. This crop is popular with cat and dog owners too, reaching similar appeal as more widely used crops like wheat, barley and soy. In fact, 49% of pet owners strongly associate faba beans with being natural and 45% with being sustainable.v In addition, faba beans provide a range of technical and nutritional benefits in cat and dog foods that make them an attractive alternative to animal-derived or other plant-based ingredients such as those made from pea. SUSTAINABLE SUCCESS WITH FABA BEANS When it comes to sustainability, faba beans help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at farm level. The faba beans can capture nitrogen from the air, to provide it for themselves and subsequent plants, which reduces the need for fertilizer input and improves soil quality. They are a resilient crop that has significantly lower carbon emissions than animal protein and can be grown easily in the northern hemisphere. BENEO’s faba beans are grown in Germany, in proximity to the production plant, and are REDCert2 certified, which is equivalent to the Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA) from SAI at the highest “Gold” level. Localised transportation costs, the fact that no water is used during production, the low energy input needed compared to wet processes and no requirement for chemicals or processing aids add up to a more sustainable process that also delivers lower production costs. The result is a better and more stable cost to protein ratio for producers than some animal-based ingredients or vegetal isolates, for instance. Also, the long-term contracts with local farmers ensure production and supply chain resilience for both BENEO and pet food producers using the company’s faba bean protein, starch and fibre ingredients. Together with an external partner, BENEO also conducted a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for its faba bean ingredients. The comparison of BENEO’s LCA results with animal protein like fishmeal and competitive vegetal protein ingredients like soy or pea concentrate showed that faba bean protein concentrate gains a competitive edge through low climate change impact. THE NUTRITIONAL AND TECHNICAL POWER OF FABA BEANS Faba beans are a concentrated source of vegetal protein and starch which offer producers a good alternative to animal and soy proteins when creating plant-based or hybrid pet foods. BENEO’s faba bean protein concentrate provides pet owners with a non-GMO, clean label source of high-quality vegetal protein. It contains a minimum of 60% protein on dry matter and offers (ileal) digestibility scores close to 90%. Containing quite high levels of glutamine, which supports the growth of intestinal cells, as well as arginine, which is considered to be important for cognitive health, faba bean protein concentrate Photo: Dennis Möbus/Südzucker
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