Protein from pea gin could be just the tonic
A story about creating gin from peas instead of wheat, and the knock-on supply of feed from such an endeavor, captured readers' imagination last month.
While the researchers involved in the UK and Ireland project saw that pea gin would have a larger land footprint than wheat gin, depending on rotation effects, they argued that the supply of protein rich feed co-products and their use in livestock production would offset the higher carbon footprint of the pea version.
"In the starch fraction there is a protein rich co-product that is especially good at replacing soybeans in animal feed. It is only when you consider using this concentrated protein in the co-product, as an animal feed, that you see the full benefit of using peas instead of wheat as a feedstock for gin production.”
