Vegetable proteins, including soya-bean meal (SBM), can only be included in diets for newly-weaned piglets in restricted amounts as they can induce a transient local gut hypersensitivity. This hypersensitivity may be a causative factor in post-weaning diarrhoea. The object of the current experiment was to assess whether protease treatment of SBM could reduce in vitro antigenicity of SBM and improve its nutritional value when fed to newly weaned piglets.

Soya-bean meal was treated for 3 h at 50°C at 800 g water / kg. Treatment was carried out at pH 4.5 without and with lg protease P2 (Finnfeeds International Ltd) / kg soya-bean meal dry matter (DM). Treated SBM was neutralised and dried at 65°C before inclusion into diets. The diets were formulated to contain 14.5 MJ Digestible Energy (DE), 190 g crude protein (CP) and 12 g total lysine / kg.