The global swine industry adopted early-weaning practices a generation ago. However, early weaned piglets have been plagued by poor growth performance, known as the “post-weaning lag.” One cause of this is the piglets’ hypersensitivity to soy proteins.
These proteins have been found to be allergenic to the intestinal lumen, leading to biological responses like inflammation and minimized nutrient absorption capacity. This leads producers to utilize more digestible sources of protein.
However, this comes at a cost, as they are much more expensive than SBM. Yet, this may not fix the problem, as diets will still have some level of SBM inclusion which can still generate allergic reactions in the gut.
Studies conducted by Novus International investigated the in vitro ability of CIBENZA® DP100 protease feed enzyme to hydrolyze soybean glycinin and β-conglycinin and then evaluated the in vivo effects of protease on performance, intestinal morphology, and inflammatory response of nursery piglets fed corn-soybean diets with different crude protein concentrations.
Read more to learn the results of the studies conducted by Novus and the role allergies play in piglet gut heatlh.
