USSEC recently organized a full-fat soybean (FFSB) meal feed uses activity in Bucharest, Romania to provide key customers in Northeast Europe’s feed compounding industry with more information about FFSB.  FFSB and its derived products have long offered the potential to encourage Northeast European countries to import U.S. soy, but the market in that region still has insufficient knowledge of its production and utilization.  Production managers, technologists, livestock nutrition advisors and quality control specialists representing feed compounders from Poland, Slovakia and Hungary met at this conference to learn about FFSB manufacturing technologies, equipment specifications, nutritional values for various species and production groups of livestock and practical utilization in animal diets.  Optimization of the quality assurance aspects of the product group were also presented to participants.
Dr. Mian Riaz, Director of the Food Protein R&D Center and Head of the Extrusion Technology Program, Nutrition and Food Science Dept. at Texas A&M worked with participants on the manufacturing and technology portion of the training program.  Dr. Julian Wiseman, Professor of Animal Production at the University of Nottingham, UK, focused on quality control and nutritional aspects.  Both of these specialists have been highly supportive of USSEC’s European marketing program.  Participants especially appreciated the addition of practical experience to the training program with a field visit to a local soybean extrusion operation at a local Premivet feed compounder.
The training activity was conducive to helping Northeast European customers correct unfavorable information acquired from other sources and to show them the rich benefits offered by the utilization of full-fat soybean meal, especially in swine and poultry diets. After the conference, Paweł Pawęzowski of LIRA-Pasze feed compounder in western Poland said, “My company, which already uses two extruders to process grains, is going to take on processing of soybeans as well to include first in pig pre-starter and starter diets as well as in broiler feeds to start with.  We surely will seek USSEC’s assistance in researching to source good supply of soybeans in the U.S.”