Rapeseed Meal

Glucosinolates are compounds present in Brassica seed whose breakdown products constrained the use of traditional rapeseed meal in animal diets. Low-glucosinolate types removed that constraint, and the meal moved from a material fed cautiously to one formulators use routinely. This is the clearest case in the oilseed complex of a breeding change whose principal beneficiary was the co-product rather than the main product.

Rapeseed is normally crushed without dehulling, so its meal carries the seed coat and is higher in fibre than dehulled soybean meal — one reason it is priced below soybean meal and sits more naturally in ruminant diets. Two forms reach the market: solvent-extracted meal, with little residual oil, and expeller or cold-pressed cake, which retains more oil and therefore more energy but keeps less well.

• Dairy rations — the largest outlet in many temperate markets
• Beef and other ruminant feeding
• Pig and poultry diets — used at levels set by the formulator and diet
• Expeller cake — where residual oil is wanted as an energy source

Meal ships in bulk and in bags and is often pelleted for density and flow. It is hygroscopic and will cake, heat, and mould if held moist, and expeller grades with higher residual oil have shorter keeping quality than fully extracted meal. Meal that has heated in store has lost protein quality that no downstream step restores.