ASPA (Animal Science and Production Association) organized the 21th edition of its annual congress (link to libro degli abstract) in Padua.
Our team (LINK TO PAGINA DEL TEAM) attended the event and participated with two posters.
The first one was focused on Effect of salty or sweet food leftover based diets on plasma metabolites in piglets(link to pdf del poster).
Animal feed production competes with human food production for the use of lands and natural resources. Therefore, the use of alternative feed ingredients could increase the sustainability of livestock production. In this study conventional cereal grains have been partially replaced by confectionery (FFPs-C) or bakery former food products (FFPs-B) in post-weaning piglets’ diet, to evaluate their effect on pig plasma metabolites.
The results showed that the levels of plasma metabolites were similar across the two experimental groups compared with the control diet over the time.
In conclusion, the inclusion of FFPs (up to a level of 30%) in post-weaning piglets’ diet does not lead to a significant perturbation of the level of several serum metabolites, thereby enhancing the hypothesis of their reuse in animal nutrition.
The second poster was titledSalad Crops Leftover as Feed Ingredient for Ruminant Diets: Nutrients Content and Microbiological Quality (link to pdf del poster). In Italy, salad crops represent 10% of fruit and vegetable sales and Italy is the 2nd largest producer of salad crops in EU markets (bar chart). Data indicates that 41% of salad is wasted during fresh-cut salad processing. Such materials could be used as feedingstuffs for farms animals. This abstract is focus on fresh-cut leafy salad crops as potential ruminant feed. The chemical composition of this class of by-products makes them comparable to other traditional feeds, such as fresh forage, and suggests that they could be considered for ruminant nutrition. The same biomass was safe from a microbiological point of view. Although at a very early stage, the potential of this new biomass seems high, and can also reduce the environmental impact of both food and livestock sectors.