Concerns about the misleading conclusions regarding estimation of the net energy value of soybean meal relative to corn using the caloric efficiency approach in pigs.

Apart from energy balance trials such as calorimetry, growth trials could also be used to estimate the energy values of feed ingredients with caloric efficiency as an indicator. Recent work used such methods reported greater net energy (NE) value of soybean meal (SBM) relative to corn in nursery pigs. We theoretically compared the NE values of SBM and corn according to the definition of NE and properties of the major chemical compositions in each ingredient. Meanwhile, we thoroughly examined the diet formulations and related analysis used in this work and compared this study with some peer works. We found that this study may suffer from problems with experimental design, reference citation, and data interpretation. In summary, the conclusion from the recent work that the SBM NE value may be greater than the corn NE value is likely to be erroneous.