Food Recycle

Australia must properly manage food waste to minimise biosecurity risks.

Sus scrofa is one of the most successful environmental and agricultural pests in Australia. Commonly known as feral pigs, their numbers are said to range between 3.2 million and 30 million and they inhabit 45% of the country’s land mass. Farmers and scientists have been working on containment programs for several years, with limited success.

These animals reproduce at an alarming rate, destroy livestock, spread weeds, and damage infrastructure. Common food sources for these voracious creatures are food at landfill dump sites and food waste that is being composted.

Food waste can contain contaminated animal products (whether legally imported or otherwise) that may not be safe for feeding to domestic or feral livestock. The biggest risk is that pigs may get infected with foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) or African swine fever (ASF).

The risks of spreading FMD and ASF through Australian livestock are very high. The 2001 outbreak of FMD in the UK was traced to a small farm that fed their pigs with swill, which is prohibited in Australia. Swill is animal food that contains, or has been in contact with, meat products or meat by-products. It has been estimated that a moderate FMD outbreak could cost the Australian economy around $80bn. Recent outbreaks of ASF in Papua New Guinea and Timor Leste, as well as FMD in Indonesia, are cause for serious concern.

“Given the difficulties in enforcing swill feeding regulations and maintaining barriers around potential waste food sources for feral pigs, any mechanism that removes this untreated waste food from the environment, will bring significant improvements to Australia’s biosecurity,” says Dr Ron Glanville. Dr Glanville has had a career of over four decades working in animal health in Australia, including the positions of Chief Biosecurity Officer, Chief Veterinary Officer and Chief Inspector of Stock for Queensland.

An Australian company, Food Recycle, is doing exactly what Dr Glanville advocates –developing a process to remove untreated food waste from the environment and doing it safely and profitably. Unlike commercial composting, Food Recycle’s process converts food waste into high value products and incentivises private businesses to run recycling facilities at a profit.

“One of the reasons I’m involved as a consultant at Food Recycle is to address the huge amount of food we waste in our culture and with our growing population, we cannot afford that,” says Dr Glanville. “The other reason is this project reduces the risk of disease by ensuring that food waste is treated properly.”

Dr Glanville has designed the Food Recycle biosecurity process step, and developed the production facility process protocols for use both in Australia and the rest or the world.

“The food waste is treated for all major biosecurity threats as part of the patented recycling process,” says Nathan Boyle, COO, Food Recycle. “The process offers the opportunity to divert food waste away from landfill and compost sites and instead, produce feed for livestock and aquaculture.” Food waste can spread diseases even if the food has been cooked or frozen. The 2001 outbreak of FMD in the UK resulted in more than six million animals being destroyed. “A range of viruses are potentially transmissible through food waste on a global scale,” says Dr Glanville who says he has not seen any other process that takes food waste and outputs dry powder for animal food.

In addition to biosecurity risks caused by food waste, there are other adverse impacts on the environment. The Australian Government’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) notes that if global food waste was a country it would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter, behind the US and China.

‘Creating value from food waste’ is one of the ten waste management initiatives mentioned by DCCEEW. Food waste costs the Australian economy around $36.6bn each year. The amount of land used to grow food that is wasted covers in excess of 25 million hectares, a landmass larger than the state of Victoria. “Food Recycle can take two tonnes of food waste and can repurpose that into one tonne of complete animal feed at a total cost substantially cheaper than normal commercial feed, enabling genuine circular economies,” says Boyle.

One of the studies was managed by the University of New England in collaboration with Poultry Hub. The 40-week feed trial on layer hens was conducted using a high food waste-based diet with feed provided by Food Recycle. Egg quality and hen health were monitored with the study demonstrating the advantages of food waste-based feed for laying hens. Performance was improved with food waste-based diets and egg production and quality were largely unchanged.

The CSIRO study on barramundi, similarly, provided positive results after a six-week trial. The fish were provided diets with 67% of their traditional ingredients replaced by Food Recycle’s feed and they showed a weight gain of 35% compared to the control group.

“In an ideal world, food waste should be treated as soon as it enters the waste stream. Until now, there has not been a financially viable way of achieving this,” says Glanville. Technologies like the one developed by Food Recycle address the triple threats caused by food waste – biosecurity hazards, environmental damage, and economic loss. foodrecycle.com