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John O\u2019Doherty, one of the authors on the paper and a professor of monogastric nutrition at University College Dublin, said he was looking for potential alternatives for in-feed antibiotics when he came across the notion of feeding pigs mushrooms.<\/p>\n
Previously, O\u2019Doherty said, he had been working with seaweed, which contain high levels of immune-stimulating fibers called beta-glucans. But the beta-glucan content of seaweed can be highly variable and harvesting the seaweeds, which lost much of their nutritional content when dried, proved challenging.<\/p>\n
Mushrooms also contain high levels of naturally occurring beta-glucans, and O\u2019Doherty said he began to consider mushrooms as a potential feed ingredient after realizing that large quantities of edible mushrooms are discarded by producers in the warmer summer months when consumer demand declines.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the number of studies we have done, all show one thing: major improvements in feed efficiencies,\u201d O\u2019Doherty said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re also seeing in a lot of cases higher antioxidant content in the pork, and better shelf life.\u201d<\/p>\n
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This latter benefit, O\u2019Doherty said, can be enhanced by growing mushrooms under ultraviolet light to enrich the fungus with vitamin D. This sort of technique could prove especially interesting for the creation of future feed additives with additional properties, O\u2019Doherty said, because mushrooms can take on the nutritional properties of their environment \u2014 for example, growing mushrooms on a substrate containing selenium, which prompts a prebiotic response in pigs.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Doherty said he\u2019s also interested in growing mushrooms on a zinc-based substrate in order to capture some of the mineral\u2019s antimicrobial effects.\u00a0This might be some time off. But in the meanwhile, O\u2019Doherty said, if you have access to a source of waste mushrooms, a feeding trial could be worth a shot.<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely would be telling people to try it,\u201d he said. \u201cEveryone talks that seaweed is going to be excellent, but if you look at the research done, there\u2019s very little positive response. [Mushrooms] are very different from the seaweed \u2014 the seaweed is a challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n