PLANTIBIOTICS · Functional ingredient from fermented vegetable waste streams to diminish the use of antibiotics in pig husbandry

PROVALOR is a highly innovative Dutch SME dedicated to the development of functional foods located in Hoofddorp (The Netherlands) and employing 15 people. Since 1998 we have been working in processing food wastes, particularly from vegetable remnants and obtaining functional ingredients for human consumption. Our strategy focuses in obtaining high-value ingredients, and we have a vast know-how in this field having released to the market several successful products such as foodfibers refined from vegetables, a meat substitute made exclusively from vegetables (first without soja), and juices refined from vegetable remnants.We have obtained a functional extract from fermented vegetable remnants through our ad-hoc exclusive methodology. When included as a functional ingredient in pig feed in an amount of 0.02-0.05%, it promotes agglutination of hazardous bacteria in the pig’s gut, allowing them to get expelled with the faeces, minimising illnesses and reducing the necessity of the use of antibiotics.Antibiotics are a key tool against infectious bacterial diseases. The use of sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics in food-animal feeds (growth promoters) has been a very common practice to prevent animals from diseases and to improve production performance in intensive animal husbandry, but this practice has been banned since 2006. This problem is a big issue, in the EU and worldwide, and great effort is being put to find viable alternatives. Actually there is a recently constituted Focus Group within EIP-AGRI, dedicated to “Reducing antibiotic use in pig farming”. They encourage to “further examine use of plant-based pig feed additives”. We have obtained an effective solution in this line, and considering an average content of 0,04% of PLANTIBIOTICS there is a potential market for 20.000tn yearly only in the EU.