Re:place

For many years, soya has traditionally been used as chicken feed within the farming industry, particularly in the UK. However, there have been widespread concerns about its use and how sustainable it is. To keep up with demand, soya farming has led to vast amounts of deforestation, especially in Brazil. Shipping the soya over to the UK requires extensive transport miles, creating a growing carbon footprint associated with poultry farming.

Whilst humans also consume soya in foods like tofu and soya milk, the majority of soya’s global production is used as animal feed. In the UK at any one time, there are approximately 29 million hens laying eggs and 116 million broilers - chickens bred and raised specifically for meat. All of these animals require a healthy and nutritious food source.  It’s more important than ever that animal farming research focuses on achieving the highest quality protein with the smallest possible impact on the planet. Researchers at NTU have come up with a cost-effective substitute for the soya used as animal feed that makes use of the 6-billion-litre per year global bioethanol market. Bioethanol is a renewable fuel, considered as a potential and more environmentally-friendly replacement for petrol. It’s created by fermenting plant crops, such as corn, wheat, sugar cane and sugar beet, and through the production process, a high protein content, fibrous residue is also formed from the yeast and plant materials used for the fermentation.

In the past, the yeasty, fibrous residue created through bioethanol production has traditionally been sold as cattle feed. With the demand for bioethanol expected to increase over the next decade, there will be a surplus of the co-product that could go to waste. Professor Emily Burton and her team found a way to use this co-product more sustainably, by turning it into high quality and environmentally-sustainable chicken food.