When pigs and beef cattle are processed in a slaughterhouse, the inedible parts are often used to produce meat and bone meal, which is a valuable byproduct for pigs and chickens. However, the production of meat and bone meal requires heating, which can reduce the amino acid (AA) digestibility of this byproduct in pigs and chickens. The hypothesis of the current study was that heat damage decreases AA digestibility in meat and bone meal, with different reduction patterns between broiler chickens and pigs. As hypothesized, AA digestibility in meat and bone meal decreased with greater heat damage, but the patterns for most AA differed between the species. Specifically, a quadratic decrease in the digestibility of arginine was only observed in growing pigs, whereas a quadratic response was only observed in the digestibility of other AA except for tryptophan, aspartate, glycine, and proline in broiler chickens.

Read the full article in the Journal of Animal Science.