A Progressive Approach to the Livestock Industry

Rising demand for meat

Worldwide demand for meat has been rising for a number of years, particularly in developing countries led by China.
Consequently, demand for corn, wheat, and soybeans,^*1 which are primarily used in livestock feeds, is also increasing. In addition, recently, demand for corn as a source of bio-fuel has been growing rapidly, with more and more arable land in the United States being designated for this crop. In this social context, the need for more effective utilization of food resources is growing day by day.

The essential role of amino acids for raising livestock

Generally, livestock feeds consist of a combination of energy sources such as corn and wheat, and protein sources such as soybean meal. Soybean meal is rich in lysine, an amino acid deficient in corn and wheat. However, due to the high price of soybean meal relative to grains such as corn and wheat, using more soybean meal to meet lysine requirements is not necessarily regarded as economically feasible.
Therefore, feed formulators are inclined to decrease the cost of feeds by slightly increasing the proportion of corn and wheat, which are comparatively cheaper than soybean meal. This tends to create an insufficiency of lysine and an excess of the other nutrients, particularly other amino acids, resulting in adverse effects on livestock.
When animals utilize amino acids for body protein synthesis, their utilization is limited to the amount of the amino acid most deficient in the feed (the so-called limiting amino acid), regardless of the amount of the other amino acids. (This mechanism is often explained by the barrel theory of amino acids.) Consequently, the surplus portion of the other amino acids is wasted. However, if lysine were supplemented to such feeds, more amino acids can be used, thereby potentially improving the growth of animals and the utilization efficiency of nutrients in feeds.

Improving feed utilization efficiency through amino acids based on the barrel theory

Advantages of adding lysine to feed

Unbalanced feeds negatively impact the environment

Feeds that lack a balance of amino acids are not only unhealthy for livestock, but also negatively impact the environment. Amino acids consumed in excess are not utilized as nutrients for animals, and are excreted as nitrogen compounds in manure. By simply replacing soybean meal with more corn and wheat in order to reduce feed cost, the shortage of lysine results in the other amino acids being wasted, and this leads to excretion of large amounts of nitrogen compounds.^*2 In recent years, nitrogen compounds contained in livestock excreta have been considered as a major factor that leads to environmental pollution, including pollution of soil and groundwater, and, consequentially, pollution of rivers and oceans. Accordingly, nitrogen compounds derived from livestock manure are now strictly regulated by laws in many countries.

Environmental impact of greenhouse gases produced by livestock

The group's contributions through amino acids

Helping prevent environmental pollution and securing food resources

The Ajinomoto Group has developed its amino acid manufacturing technologies over many years. It has been producing and marketing feed-use amino acids since 1965, and now operates production and marketing bases in five countries. Combining natural feed ingredients with feed-use amino acids improves the amino acid balance in feeds, thereby considerably reducing wasted amino acids, which in turn reduces the amount of nitrogen compounds excreted in manure and helps diminish environmental pollution. Well-balanced feed also ensures that natural feed resources are not used excessively, enabling livestock products to be produced more efficiently. In the context of global food production, the rate of which is too low to support the rapidly increasing world population, the Ajinomoto Group is contributing to securing feed crops for the livestock industry and foods for human beings through its feed-use amino acids.

Helping use land effectively

By using feed-use amino acids, the production area of land needed for feed-use crops can be reduced, contributing to the effective use of limited arable land. For example, if a portion of soybean meal in feed were replaced with a combination of corn and feed-use lysine, more land to produce more corn would be needed. However, since the yield of corn is about three times higher than that of soybeans, the land area needed to produce corn in the replaced portion would be much less than that for soybean meal. For the replaced portion, the required arable land would be reduced by approximately 70 percent. Taking a step further, if feed-use amino acids did not exist, the expansion of arable land for feed-use crops would have to be accelerated in order to support the increasing consumption of meat, possibly leading to environmental destruction such as deforestation.

Results of replacing 50 tons of soybean meal with corn and feed-use lysine

Combating global warming

Recent research suggests that the use of feed-use amino acids may contribute to curbing global warming by reducing both the N₂O generated from livestock manure and the lifecycle CO₂ emission of compound feeds.^*3 N₂O is a greenhouse gas like CO₂ and methane, but its potential impact is approximately 300 times that of CO₂. Therefore, even a slight increase in N₂O emissions can have a notable effect on global warming. A research project to investigate the efficacy of feed-use amino acids to reduce N₂O emissions began in April 2008. If results prove our hypothesis correct, amino acids will gain a new status as one possible solution to global environmental problems.