The large expansion of the canola crushing industry that occurred in North America since 2010 has increased the supply of canola meal for the animal feed industry. According to the Canadian Oilseed Processors Association, 4.7 million tons of canola were produced in Canada in 2015 (2.7 times greater than 20 years ago). Similarly, the USDA Economic Research Service reported canola meal production in 2015/16 in the USA was 1.067 million short tons, increasing around four times during the last two decades.
A study published recently by University of Manitoba researchers (2016) evaluated the nutritive characteristics of canola meal from Canadian processing facilities (Table 1). The authors analysed samples of canola meal collected from eleven canola processing plants over four successive years (2011-2014). The mean protein and fat contents were 41.7 and 3.5% of DM, 3.9 percentage units greater and 1.9 percentage units lower, respectively, than numbers published in the Dairy NRC (2001) tables.
There were variations among plants and years in the contents of protein, fiber, fat, and lysine of canola meal samples. While variations in the protein content of the canola meal in this study was reported to be mainly due to variations in the protein content of the canola seed feedstock, variations between processing facilities and years in the content of fat could be a consequence of different processing practices among the processing facilities in terms of adding back any by-products of seed cleaning.
Continue reading this article published in International Dairy Topics.
