Animal Feed

Animal feed is always in the headlines when there is another scandal that also affects the consumer – such as fungal poisons or dioxin in the feed trough.

Man has changed farm animals by breeding so that they produce twice as much milk, eggs and meat as in grandmother’s time. The broiler can almost be watched growing. At the Bavarian State Institute for Agriculture in Kitzingen, poultry researchers are investigating how certain additives affect growth, health and egg production. In Germany alone, the industry generates annual sales of seven billion euros.

Here, a good dozen raw materials and about 15 additives are processed into highly concentrated concentrated concentrated feed and usually pressed into pellets. They build muscle, lean escalopes and breast fillets. The mixing plants also receive many waste materials from food production – such as grist, dairy residues and fatty acids. In the dioxin scandal a few years ago, industrial fats were contaminated.

This is why feed manufacturers are testing more frequently than before.

The food mountain as a global food and environmental problem

The production of one kilogram of chicken meat produces about two kilograms of greenhouse gases, pork five kilograms.

Pasture grazing as an alternative?

They convert cellulose, i.e. grass and hay, into protein. They do not need cereals or soy. However, a cow without concentrated feed will not produce 8,000 litres of milk a year, but only half. You need valuable grain – and protein.

They should be cheap so that we can buy cheaply. But the growing demand for animal feed is robbing people of valuable cultivated land and destroying the environment.