Scientists with the Western College of Veterinary Medicine are researching to optimize the inclusion of pea starch in swine rations.
Increased use of peas to provide protein for manufacturing human food products, such as energy drinks, results in an abundance of finely ground starch co-products available for use in livestock feed.
These co-products are a low-cost energy source, but extremely finely ground feed ingredients can cause gastric ulcers, reducing performance or even killing the pig.
Dr. Matt Loewen, an Associate Professor in Veterinary Medical Biosciences with the Western College of Veterinary Medicine, said particle sizes range from 400 to 16-hundred microns compared to these pea starch co-products at about 40 microns.
Dr. Loewen said the industry would like to use this cheap starch in swine in western Canada because it’s a cheap energy source.
“We’ve increased plant protein production in western Canada, but we don’t have a use for that starch.”
One solution is to feed it to pigs, but this finely ground particle size causes gastric ulcers, but no idea why. So the first goal in this research is to determine what the inclusion level should be of this very finely ground starch so that’s the first one.
Concerning gastric ulcers, there’s a cause and effect, but they don’t know what’s going on in the stomach.
“We don’t know if it’s a microbiome change or it’s just some change in physiology. Does the finely ground starch produce more acid secretion that causes the erosion?”
Once the researchers understand the basic mechanisms of why this finely ground starch causes this, that’ll be a better guide in adding things to the diet formulation to prevent those gastric ulcers from occurring.
There are probably three lines of thought on why this finely ground pea starch results in more gastric ulcers.
One is a physical one in that it somehow changes the viscosity of the gastric solution that’s in the stomach once the pigs eat. So somehow, the viscosity of its changed, so there’s more gastric reflux, so the viscosity of the actual ingesta has changed and that somehow results in more ulcers occurring.
The second hypothesis is a physiological change within the gastric mucosa in that somehow these particles are increasing the genes responsible for acid secretion ending up getting more acid secretion. So as a result, the pH of the stomach is much lower, and a lower pH is detrimental to the lining of the stomach, causing gastric ulcers that way from a much lower pH in the stomach.
The third hypothesis is that it’s a microbiome change. This starch is causing some change in the microbiome, meaning that some bacteria get overgrown and cause some change in the gastric mucosa.
One thought would be that it’s some lactobacillus producing lactic acid, which lowers the pH, and that’s enough to cause gastric ulcers.
Dr. Loewen said researchers hope to determine safe inclusion levels without modifying the diet, identify the mechanisms that result in gastric ulcers and develop strategies that will allow inclusion rates to increase. •
— By Harry Siemens