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Farm-Scape, Episode 2257

A researcher with Sabetha Kansas based Wenger Manufacturing is confident that, despite its limitations, extrusion based feed processing has great potential in the manufacture of least cost pathogen free feeds.

While there are several types of extrusion systems available today the process itself is described simply as a continuous way of cooking and combining different starch, protein and fiber based ingredients into a completely cooked homogenous mixture.

Wenger Manufacturing Technical Center Manager Brian Plattner explains extrusion is limited to recipes that use specific ingredients which fit the process but extrusion offers several advantages.

"The extrusion system is quite flexible. We can work with a forming system which may run at temperatures that are 30 to 40 degrees Celsius all the way up to a continuous cooking system which may be as high a 150 to 160 degrees Celsius.

There's a number of companies that use it and most of the time it's because they've devised a formulation that fits the process. For example one company that I can think of uses a waste lactose product that they couldn't get in a conventional pelleting process.

Others have used maybe high fibre diets, things that don't pellet well and the extrusion or UPC system gives them a way to combine these ingredients into a finished formulation line using least cost ingredients that maybe don't fit in with conventional methods.

I also see a big push going into making hygienic products. The extrusion based systems give us the ability to knock out pathogens so being able label something as a pathogen free feed could give some huge marketing advantages and some huge potentials in terms of food safety."

Plattner admits the process notes has its limitations.

He notes recipes require a minimum amount of binding agent, typically a starch or a functional protein such as wheat or corn gluten to hold the materials together during processing and the amount of high moisture ingredients such as meat or milk byproducts as well as the amount of fat that can go into a recipe are also limited.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.