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Hydrolysed new alternative for yeast The petfood formulation
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by Francesca Susca, DVM, PhD, Pet Development Manager Lallemand Animal Nutrition, Canada
east and yeast derivative products are versatile and natural ingredients to keep in mind when formulating food for pets. They can be used for everything from a palatability enhancer to a source of nutrients and functional ingredients. This article focuses on the characteristics and benefits of a new ingredient for petfood: a specifically designed functional hydrolysed yeast. Yeasts have been part of the human diet since at least ancient Egypt when they were already used to leaven bread and ferment wine. Their exceptional fermentative and nutritional properties also make yeasts valuable nutrients for animals. Not all yeasts are equal. There are about 60 genera and about 1500 species of yeasts. Only a few are used commercially. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is the main yeast used in food, beverage and baking as well as in animal nutrition. Yeast in animal feed is either used live (probiotics) or inactivated. There are different types of yeast products: wholecell inactivated yeasts, autolysed yeasts, hydrolysed yeasts and yeast extracts, each with its own production process and nutritional properties (figure 1). In the case of whole-cell inactivated yeasts, yeast are heat inactivated, but there is no lysing step. The final product will have a low nutrients digestibility and functionality. For autolysed yeast, the yeast cells are partially lysed by endogenous enzymes, which enhances the digestibility compared to a basic inactivated dried yeast. However, this autolysis process is less controlled than a hydrolysis. The production of hydrolysed yeast involves the addition of specifically selected enzymes. These are chosen to orient and control the lysis, ensuring a specific level of functional ingredients and a consistent batch to batch product composition. This is why yeast company Lallemand has focused on the
screening of different feed-grade yeast biomasses and on the optimisation of their production processes in order to introduce to the market a specifically designed functional hydrolysed yeast for animal feed: ‘Yela Prosecure’. To create this product, a controlled hydrolysis process is applied with the addition of specifically selected exogenous enzymes to the selected biomass, ensuring high nutrient digestibility and functionality while providing reliability in terms quality and availability of appropriate volumes. The hydrolysed yeast Yela Prosecure is a feed material (Regulation (EU) No 68/2013) allows nutritionists 1) to diversify the protein sources in the diet while 2) bringing functional properties and enhancing palatability.
Mode of action
The product provides functional nutrients with dual action: in the upper gut and in the hindgut. In the upper gut, the hydrolysed yeast provides highly digestible proteins which offer a high level of free digestible amino acids with an early and fast absorption kinetic. This was demonstrated through in vitro kinetic studies
16 | May 2022 - International Petfood
Figure 1: Different yeast products and their production process