An assessment was made of the effect that different treatments (toasting, expansion, extrusion) have on the nutritional
value of protein plants (pea, faba bean, lupin). In a randomized block design, feeds were screened for enzymatic
digestibility of starch and protein, N solubility and in vitro protein degradability. Expansion and extrusion cause increased
starch enzymatic degradability while toasting produced virtually no effects. In peas this value increased from 11.80% in
meal to 39.70% in the extruded product; 85.37% is the percentage for the expanded product, while 10.90% is the starch
digestibility value for toasted peas. In faba beans the extrusion process increased starch digestibility from 11.39% to
85.05%, while in extruded lupins a complete starch hydrolysis was obtained, while in the meal the polysaccharide digestion
was 54.48%.
The expansion and extrusion processes significantly decreased rumen degradability during the first 8 hours of incubation.
Toasted peas had lower degradability if compared with controls but not with the other treatments. The only
potentially alternative source to soybean is the extruded faba bean. In spite of its lower protein content, this feed is
characterized by a considerably lower in vitro protein degradability than soybean. This implies that the digestible food
protein content is comparable (124.90 g/kg DM) to that of soybean (109.78 g/kg DM) and definitely higher than that
of all other protein plants

Ruminant production has been an essential part of human activities worldwide since ancient times. The expected increase in world population and per capita income, with an increase in the amount and prevalence of animal products in human diet, urbanisation, with a concentration of population in urban areas and an increase in losses in the supply chain, and the growing concern over the environmental impact of animal farming require a long-term global strategy for a more intensive and sustainable ruminant production. Therefore, solutions to increase the supply of high-quality products of ruminant origin, without harming human health, animal welfare, and environment, should consider the following interconnected issues discussed in this review: (a) effects of meat, milk and dairy products consumption on human health, focussing on the imbalance caused by their insufficient consumption, and the alleged increased incidence of certain diseases due to their consumption; (b) importance of the sustainable intensification of ruminant production systems (e.g. better feed conversion and higher production output per unit of input introduced into the farming system); (c) environmental impact of ruminant production; (d) improvement of animal performance by improving animal welfare; (e) adaptation of ruminants to climate change; (f) sustainable ruminant feeding (e.g. precision feeding techniques, optimisation of grazing systems, and use of unconventional feeds); (g) challenges posed by production intensification to animal breeding and conservation of animal biodiversity; and (h) strategies to increase ruminant production in developing countries, thus achieving food security in vast areas of the planet affected by fast growth of human population

This study confirms that OTA is widely present in human milk and therefore could pose a risk for the newborn.

At weaning, piglets are exposed to many stressors, such as separation from the sow, mixing with other litters, end of lactational immunity, and a change in their environment and gut microbiota. The sudden change of feeding regime after weaning causes morphological and histological changes in the small intestine which are critical for the immature digestive system. Sixteen female piglets were studied to assess the effect of sorbic acid supplementation on the small intestine tissue transcriptome. At weaning day (T0, piglet age 28 days), four piglets were sacrificed and ileal tissue samples collected. The remaining 12 piglets were weighed and randomly assigned to different postweaning (T5, piglet age 33 days) diets. Diet A (n = 6) contained 5 g/kg of sorbic acid. In diet B (n = 6), the organic acids were replaced by barley flour. Total RNA was isolated and then hybridized to CombiMatrix CustomArray™ 90-K platform microarrays, screening about 30 K genes. Even though diet had no detectable effect on the transcriptome during the first 5 days after weaning, results highlighted some of the response mechanisms to the stress of weaning occurring in the piglet gut. A total of 205 differentially expressed genes were used for functional analysis using the bioinformatics tools BLAST2GO, Ingenuity Pathway Analysis 8.0, and Dynamic Impact Approach (DIA). Bioinformatic analysis revealed that apoptosis, RIG-I-like, and NOD-like receptor signaling were altered as a result of weaning. Interferons and caspases gene families were the most activated after weaning in response to piglets to multiple stressors. Results suggest that immune and inflammatory responses were activated and likely are a cause of small intestine atrophy as revealed by a decrease in villus height and villus/crypt ratio.