Soybean meal may meet a feed mill’s specifications for crude protein but still fail to deliver the nutritional value expected by a nutritionist. That disconnect is at the heart of the challenge Dominique Bureau, Ph.D., professor at the University of Guelph, sees in evaluating soybean and soybean meal quality.
Physical damage before processing, excessive heat during drying or storage, and overprocessing at the crushing plant can alter proteins and amino acids in ways that conventional quality-control methods do not necessarily capture.
At the same time, heat cannot simply be avoided. Thermal treatment is an essential part of producing nutritionally valuable soybean meal because it reduces antinutritional factors, particularly trypsin inhibitors.
The challenge, Bureau explained during Soy Connext 2026, is finding the processing “sweet spot”: enough heat to improve nutritional value without crossing the threshold where heat begins damaging proteins and reducing amino acid availability.
“Heat treatment of the bean is extremely important and is very beneficial,” Bureau said. “However, it’s a little bit of science and art – you have to find the sweet spot.”
Understanding where quality is gained and lost requires looking beyond a soybean meal’s crude protein content and examining the entire chain, beginning with the physical condition of the soybean.
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