Washington, DC (February 6, 2024) – In comments submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Chicken Council (NCC) outlined numerous ways in which chicken producers reduce food waste, recycle byproducts and use products that would otherwise be destined for landfills. The comments were in response to the agency’s proposed Draft National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics.
In its comments, NCC emphasizes several important points and areas for enhancing the NCC’s National Strategy:
- Using byproducts. Using various byproducts in chicken feed, including bakery meal, animal proteins/fats, distillers’ dried grains with solubles and peanut meal, is a perfect example of minimizing food waste. Chickens are naturally excellent at upcycling, as they can readily digest these byproducts that would otherwise go to waste and turn them into protein for energy.
- Rendering. Rendering uses high heat and pressure to turn various meat and poultry byproducts into reusable, nutrient-dense items for livestock and pet consumption or an addition into organic fertilizer. Poultry processing facilities across the US use rendering facilities to process inedible parts of the bird or those parts that do not meet standards for human consumption. Feather meal is one of the most common byproducts from the poultry industry. Feathers are collected at the processing plants, ground and dried, then made into a slow-release, organic fertilizer or a feed additive for livestock.
- Automation and transportation. Technological expansions in poultry processing plants have greatly reduced food waste. Automated technologies help ensure chicken is cut into parts more accurately, thereby minimizing miscuts, downgrades and products that may be sent to rendering. These technologies have greatly improved yield, ensuring that more meat is removed from the bone and enters the food supply. As artificial intelligence develops and technologies are perfected, the industry will continue to minimize food waste from chicken production, ensuring that everything from the bird is yielded and little goes to waste.
Policies contributing to food waste
Unfortunately, several current and pending regulatory policies either do, or would, contribute to food waste in the chicken industry. The NCC is urging FDA and USDA to reevaluate these policies.
The first policy is for FDA to allow surplus hatchery eggs into the breaking-egg market in order to reduce waste and decrease costs. Due to fluctuating market conditions, broiler hatcheries, in some instances, have more eggs on hand than what they want to hatch. These are known as “surplus” hatching eggs. Before 2009, when the FDA implemented new rules that changed the temperature requirements for storage, broiler producers were able to sell these surplus eggs to egg processors, known as “breakers,” to be pasteurized (cooked) and used as ingredients in products such as salad dressings, bread, cake mix, pasta, pancake mix, mayonnaise, ice cream, pie crusts, sauces and many other everyday food products.
This policy forces the broiler industry to send perfectly nutritious and safe eggs to landfills instead of Americans’ tables — the very definition of wasting food.
The second policy is a proposed Salmonella framework being proposed by the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service. It is being drafted to improve food safety — decreasing Salmonella on raw poultry products, specifically — but it is not based on scientific data or associated with any known public health outcomes.
This regulation will likely result in entire days of production being wasted, farmers having extended out times, delayed shipments of birds and chicks, and grocery stores and restaurants being delayed fresh product. If any test comes back positive, processing facilities will be forced to either cook, render or throw away the chicken, when it is perfectly safe to eat when properly cooked and handled. As a low estimate, if just 1% of the over 46 billion pounds of chicken produced each year were discarded or rendered, this would lead to over 460 million pounds of fresh chicken being wasted annually.
The need for action
“Without spending additional resources, agencies can take action to not only reduce waste but also decrease food prices while increasing their availability for consumers,” NCC’s comments concluded. “By working cooperatively towards achieving this goal, innovative solutions can be found.”
