USSEC Quality Control Experts Speak on Importance of Soy Quality to Romanian Managers

When it comes to creating balanced and efficient poultry feed, quality control is of the utmost importance for today’s feed industry. Quality control is multi-disciplinary work involving chemists, biologists, and nutritionists. Due to its importance, soybean meal involves complex analysis and tests in order to establish the chemical composition, nutritional values, and ingredient matrix in feed formulation.
In an effort to support the growing poultry industry from Romania, USSEC implemented a dedicated activity to assist the technical personnel working in the feed mill laboratories in updating with the latest knowledge in quality control programs, focusing on soy products.
During the last week of May, USSEC consultants Dr. Roselina Angel (University of Maryland), Dr. Paloma Rebollar (Technical University of Madrid, Spain), Dr. Roser Sala (Universitat Autònomade, Barcelona, Spain) and Dr. Ana Cristina Baroetta (Universitat Autònomade, Barcelona, Spain) traveled to Romania to meet with customers at their feed mills and laboratories with the purpose of understanding the current practices used by Romanian customers to evaluate ingredient quality and find possibilities to improve quality control programs, especially in soybean meal and full fat soybean meal.

USSEC Consultants visit Nutriva Feed Mill, part of Safir broiler integration, located in northeast Romania

The goal of the field visits was to educate the quality control specialist in properly designing quality control programs, NIR, and microscopy as tools to establish correct chemical composition of raw materials, especially soybean meal of different origins.

Dr. Roselina Angel discusses the importance of particle size in quality control of ingredients

During the field visits, the lab personnel from the companies visited, listened and showed interest in the quality control recommendations made by the consultants. Particular attention was paid by the lab personnel on the consultants’ recommendation regarding interpreting the soybean meal analysis, particle size for KOH analysis, equipment used for particle size reduction, and correlations between protein solubility and urease activity levels.

Dr. Baroetta, Dr. Angel, Dr. Sala, and Dr. Rebollar discuss full fat soy particle size with Mr. Sandu Vitalariu at the Agricola Feed Mill in Bacau, Romania

Besides sharing information, the field visits proved that regular contact between USSEC and customers enhances the message that needs to be communicated and reminds customers of the importance of quality differences among soy products, in addition to what USSEC can mean for these customers both from a commercial as well as a technical point of view. Romania and the southeastern European market, especially in the near future, deserve increased attention as a destination for U.S. Soy and soy products.