Enzyme activity was used by mankind throughout history for thousands of years in numerous processes of producing and preserving food without having sufficient knowledge of the nature and characteristics of the enzymes they used. Conventional processes used for producing alcoholic drinks (wine) and fermenting dough were already illustrated in old Egyptian wall paintings.

For these processes, primarily living microbes were added to raw materials obtained from plants and animals.

These micro-organisms such as yeasts and lactic acid bacteria (Lactobacillaceae) produced in turn the enzymes required for the desired conversion. Further examples of enzyme applications are the preservation of white cabbage by adding lactic acid bacteria and also the production of cheese in order to preserve milk and milk constituents.

Enzymes play a major role in all vital processes. Their actual existence was only established in the 19th century, In 1857 Pasteur could demonstrate that fermentation is closely associated with the activity of live yeast. The term “enzymes” was coined in 1878 by Kühne for “soluble ferments” which are not bound to the living cell. This term derives from the Greek “en zyme” and has the same meaning as “in leavening”. In 1897 Buchner provided the final and decisive evidence for the effect of enzymes when he demonstrated that the cell-free squeezed juice obtained from yeast cells can cause alcoholic fermentation. In 1893 Ostwald in turn recognized the catalytic effect of enzymes. Then, in 1909 Röhm discovered the activity of proteases originating from the animal pancreas when processing hide for the preparation of leather.

The systematic development of industrial enzymes started with the isolation of a mixture of enzymes from a mould (aspergillus oryzae) cleaving carbohydrates (carbohydrases) and proteins (proteases) by the Japanese scientist Takamine in 1894. Only a year later Boidin was able to develop a process for obtaining alcohol from grain which also employed a mould. The enzymes of this mould caused the saccharification of the starch contained in the grain. The sugars thus obtained are subsequently fermented to alcohol by the yeasts.

Despite intensive research in the 19th century, it was not possible to establish the chemical structure of enzymes. Not until 1926 James Summers was able to finally demonstrate with urease that enzymes are proteins.

The period after World War II then saw the advent of an intensive development in the production of substances by fermentation technology which in its beginnings mainly served to obtain antibiotics as well as fungal and bacterial amylases. Today the majority of commercially important enzymes are produced are micro-organisms (fungi, yeasts and bacteria). In addition to these, enzyme preparations from animal tissues (e. g. lipases and proteases from the pancreas) and plants (e. g. papain, a protease contained in the papaya fruit) also play an important role in the industrial application of enzymes to this day.

At present the commercially most important groups of enzymes produced by microbes are the proteases and carbohydrases. The main enzyme markets are the detergent industry followed by starch production and dairy processing. Until the middle of the eighties the use of enzymes in animal feeds was only of secondary importance. They were mainly employed in regions such as Canada, Scandinavia and the former GDR where a limited availability of highly digestible raw materials, such as maize, made their use a necessity. The technical effects observed so far by the application of enzymes, which originally were developed for other application purposes, seemed to make their use in animal nutrition very often not attractive enough. This situation only changed when the marketing of enzyme preparations specially developed for animal feeds attracted an increased interest in these products.

Feed enzymes are the result of many years of expensive research and development processes. Due to their gradually increasing importance, they were included in the directive 70/524/EEC for additives in animal nutrition as a new group of substances in 1993 and are thus in the European Union legally regulated for use in animal feeds. They are subjected to a rigorous approval procedure by the European Commission, general directorate for agriculture. Only after thorough examination by this regulatory body and scientific panels of the 15 member states is approval by all EU states granted by mutual recognition procedure. In addition to the efficacy and quality of an additive, the safety of humans and animals as well as environmental protection is at the heart of these examinations.