in extreme eating challenges on popular television shows. Dr Tiwasing’s call for a change is linked to new UK research


which is designed to create a development and use roadmap for feed business operators, insect farmers, and policymakers to follow. Centred on Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), the research is being backed by a £10,700 grant from SEFARI Gateway, a consortium of six research institutes. “The introduction of new and developing EU regulations relating


to edible insect products have muddied the waters, leading to confusing procedures for those looking to trade and export edible insects,” said Dr Tiwasing, who is originally from Thailand where ‘eating insects as a snack is commonplace’. “This has been particularly impactful following the UK’s exit from


the EU because it means there are currently no regulations for the edible insect (for human consumption) industry, and it is therefore illegal to sell insects for human consumption in the UK. Policymakers need to take urgent action in order for the insect sector industry to survive in Europe and the UK.” David McClelland, Technical Director of Norvite Animal Nutrition,


Aberdeenshire, commented that the greatest benefit of the new research was that insect protein may be produced locally, which would benefit the environment and have very good sustainability credentials. The clearest barrier, meanwhile, is whether or not consumers will accept the concept. “The food chain, including farmers and feed producers, is very


proud of the high-quality food produced in Scotland,” he said. “While new technologies like this are to be welcomed, therefore, they must also be socially acceptable.”


Back to the future Sometimes, of course, you have to take a step backwards to access the next advance. This is certainly the thinking behind a recent piece of Scottish/German collaboration which could ultimately provide us with faster growing barley varieties than we have a present. In addition, these new high-power barleys might also be able


perform in soil types which are currently classified as ‘marginal’ and largely unsuitable for commercial crop production. Unlikely as it may sound, the barley in question is a variety called


Bere Unst, which grows on the island of Unst, located on the northern end of the Shetland Islands. Sometimes referred to as the ’90-day barley’ because of its rapid planting-to-harvest potential, the variety isn’t being produced commercially at present due to the fact that its yield performance doesn’t match its growth rate. Thankfully, crop research leaders at the Hutton Institute in Dundee


decided to send a PhD student to Shetland, Orkney and the Western Isles to collect seed samples from the various Bere crops growing in these locations. That was sometime in 2007. Since then, the collected samples have been subject to a carefully managed multiplication programme which is designed to both preserve the unique traits of each variety, giving today’s researchers the chance to explore the value of these traits according to current scientific understanding. While 15 years is a long time to have some mystery plants growing in a far-off corner of some research field, the effort is starting to look


PAGE 12 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023 FEED COMPOUNDER


worthwhile. We could certainly do with fast-growing feed crops right now and if they could be grown on otherwise unusable land then so much the better. The story isn’t over yet, of course, but it is advancing. Late last


year, for example, a research team from Dundee headed to the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) in Gatersleben, Germany, to be trained in a state-of-the-art computational method for assembling plant genome sequences. In return, the Hutton team ran a training workshop at IPK on transcriptome data analysis, featuring the collection of Ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecules ‘expressed’ by plant genomes. All pretty heady scientific stuff, but the bottom line for Bere


Unst barley is that the collaborating researchers are getting closer to being able to extract the Shetland variety’s unique traits for use in the improvement of existing barleys around the world. The moral to this story, of course, is that if you have a plant, or


compound product of any type, which doesn’t quite add up today, think twice before you destroy it completely. Who knows what process or technology may be available in 2038 (today +15) which could finally make sense of it all.


Pets for all Finally, the old line that a ‘Pet is for life, not just for Christmas’ is surely very good news for petfood manufacturers who gained a significant number of new mouths to feed during the Covid-19 pandemic when so many people added a pet to their family. The more I look at the figures, the more amazing they seem to


be. In fact, some 3.2 million UK households acquired a pet during Covid-19 lockdown, according to the Pet Food Manufacturers’ Association, lifting total pet ownership to 17 million homes. If that figure is hard to believe, then look at the current split between


the number of veterinary surgeons now choosing to work with small animals rather than farm livestock. Clearly the pet numbers add up there as well. Recent survey data from the UK-based Royal College of Veterinary


Surgeons (RCVS) shows 1597 vets working with farm animals out of a total workforce of 27490. The number of vets working with small animals, meanwhile, is put at 15154, although a further 7095 survey respondents ticked the ‘non-specified’ box, which leaves some room for interpretation. Similarly, a veterinary profession report from Germany puts the


farm versus small animal divide at 3500 who maintain agricultural coverage against 18,500 who don’t. While not an easy set of figures to absorb if you’re a farmer, the


petfood upside is certainly positive for the feed sector. Maybe, there could also be increasing potential for a balancing of incomes here, whereby revenue from a growing petfood industry could help sustain the more traditional supply of feed into the farming sector. No matter how businesses manage to balance their books in 2023,


the crucial point will be to minimise costs and maximise output without suffering infrastructure damage in the process. After Covid-19, leading straight into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, no one is taking anything for granted this year.


Comment section is sponsored by Compound Feed Engineering Ltd www.cfegroup.com


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68