BY-PRODUCTS, BIOPROTEINS AND ANIMAL FEED

Mirela Ahmadi, Lavinia Ştef, I. Peţ, Florica Morariu, Camelia Tulcan, Cornelia Milovanov, Oana-Maria Boldura, D. Dronca, Mihaela Ivancia

Abstract
    By-products from food industry are very good sources of amino acids, peptides and proteins with high biological value. Transforming these by-products into nutritional supplements, in protein, peptide or amino acid sources would have beneficial effects both for the large quantities of whey from industry and for the food, feed and pharmaceutical industries. Such a protein-valuable by-product is the whey resulting from the cheese processing industry. Due to the high amount of whey this product it is considered "environmental pollutant", due to the high demand for oxygen for biodegradation (BOD – biochemical oxygen demand; COD – chemical oxygen demand). Thus, whey can be used directly in obtaining whey concentrates, protein isolates, whey powder; or indirectly in the production of feed, bioproteins, probiotics, lactose. Whey can be concentrated through several technological processes to produce products with different nutritional characteristics, being a good source of protein for the production of protein-supplemented feed or it can even be ingredient for the food industry. Bioproteins or cell biomass are unconventional sources of protein with much higher yields than the proteins produced by the bovine organism (which is considered a standard), but they are little used, especially in our country, and due to limitation of food and feed sources this has to be highlighted and took more in consideration.

Key words: by-products, whey, bioproteine, animal feed