At the U.S. Soy℠-sponsored symposium during the 2026 American Society of Animal Sciences Midwest meeting, Dr. Hans Stein, Professor at the University of Illinois, presented about why the swine industry needs a new net energy value for soybean meal.

“If we feed low protein diets, we do not necessarily get more net energy into the diets, and that has something to do with the net energy of soybean meal,” begins Dr. Stein.

“We have conducted DE and ME experiments for many, many sources of soybean meal at the University of Illinois, and we started noticing that we would always get DE values that were greater than these values here,” describes Dr. Stein. “That’s the first reason that, in the title, I said why we need a new net energy value for soybean meal, simply because the DE value is incorrect. We are pretty convinced about that.”

“Over the years, we have increased nitrogen retention pretty significantly,” Dr. Stein explains. “This increase in nitrogen retention has a direct impact on the net energy or soybean meal or, more correctly, the net energy of protein in diets. This would not be only for soybean meal, this would be assumed to be the case for all protein sources.”

“And finally, the net energy in soybean meal is likely between 90 and 100% of corn, and that is quite a bit greater than what you will find in the book values,” Dr. Stein states to conclude his take home messages.

Watch the video below to learn more about how net energy of protein sources, such as soybean meal, should be evaluated for the modern pig. View more presentations from this symposium here.