The Institute for Feed Analysis

The Institute for Feed Analysis

The Institute for Feed Analysis is a part of the agricultural lab company LUFA Nord-West. It is located in northwest Germany, in Oldenburg, and offers a comprehensive analytical service for the complete range of feed analysis.
Our customers are, among others, farmers, consumers, state departments and the commercial feed industry. We analyse feedstuffs like silages and cereals which are produced by farmers for feeding their own livestock. Commercial feed manufacturers and state departments order tests of compound feeds and raw materials. A lot of pet food samples comes from consumers and feed producers.
The main focus of our work is the analysis of nutrient contents (e. g. crude protein, fibre, fat, starch, sugar, metabolizable energy) of feedstuffs for livestock like cattle, pigs and poultry. Very important to know are the contents of amino acids (lysine, methionine, cystine, threonine), minerals (e. g. calcium, phosphorus, sodium, potassium, magnesium), and trace elements (e. g. copper, zinc, manganese, iron, selenium).
Many customers want to know the actual content of specific feed additives like vitamins (e. g. vitamins A, D3 and E, biotin) and coccidiostats (e. g. monensin, lasalocid, salinomycin, maduramycin, robinidine). In the last years the analysis of unwanted contaminants like heavy metals (e. g. lead, cadmium, mercury, arsenic), mycotoxins (e. g. aflatoxin, deoxynivalenol, zearalenone, ochratoxin A), residues (pesticides and other crop protection products), dioxins and PCB have become of great importance.
We offer our customers two specialities. Our laboratory is in Germany well known as an institute with an adepted feed microscopy division (e.g. composition, identification of raw materials, weed seeds, constituents of animal origin like bones and muscle fibres). The other speciality is the detection and quantification of genetic modified organism (GMO) with screening and specified methods.
The Institute for Feed Analysis is able to expand the range of analyses to any particular demand.
The Institute for Feed Analysis is, like the entire LUFA Nord-West, accredited according to the current EN/ISO 17025 standard and thus ensures, with its quality assurance system, always reliable results of analysis.