The Caribbean Broilers Group (CB) aims to establish a protein recovery facility that will convert chicken waste parts into inputs for the production of poultry feedstock.

The project, which is planned to reduce the company’s reliance on expensive imported feedstock and which involves the manufacture of feed for use only in CB’s contracted farms initially, is estimated to cost $233 million.

“The main objective of the project is to provide a sustainable source of raw materials that will substitute currently imported raw materials currently being used in Caribbean Broilers’ feed mill,” said the project description in the environmental impact assessment (EIA) submitted to the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA). “The production of such raw materials is envisioned to be environmentally friendly and would serve as an effective means of utilising protein tissue of poultry currently generated by the company’s poultry processing plant that would normally be disposed in a landfill.”

“It is an ingredient — for the feed manufacturing process the main source of protein is soyabean which has 49 per cent protein,” CB’s corporate affairs manager Dr Keith Amiel told the Business Observer. “The price of soya bean like corn has been rising on the international market and the protein component is the most expensive part of the bulk mix.

Amiel estimates that a tonne of the high-grade protein derived from the chicken waste parts (feathers, blood and offals — comprising heads, wind pipes and intestines) could replace two tons of soya bean, of which CB currently imports 50,000 to 55,000 tons.

The protein recovery facility, as described, will have the capacity to process the material, of which 23,000 tons are currently disposed of annually, and convert the waste products into “over 7,000 tons of high grade protein which can displace some protein imports that are currently entering the island”.

“The proposed development will also reduce the cost of imported feedstock (eg corn and soya products),” said the document.

But even after a public meeting held on August 4 to discuss the proposed project after the initial EIA was submitted in February, Amiel said a “decision is not taken as to what it will be used in at the moment”.

“It could be used for pet food and fish feed for tilapia,” Amiel added.

The document added that the company recognised that “the edibility of the meat products fed by the proposed poultry-based feedstock is determined by a number of criteria, including consumer acceptance, regulatory requirements, economics, hygiene, tradition, and ethnic background”, but at the same time it said it is “also cognisant of the fact that the products produced from the recovered poultry material make important economic, environmental, human, and animal health contributions to their allied industries and society”.

Consumer acceptance may have been adversely impacted since the advent of bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE (mad cow disease), which raised international concern about the safety of feeding rendered cattle to cattle.

Since the discovery of BSE in the United States, the federal government has taken some action to restrict the parts of cattle that can be fed back to cattle.

“However, most animals are still allowed to eat meat from their own species,” said the EIA document. “Pig carcasses can be rendered and fed back to pigs, chicken carcasses can be rendered and fed back to chickens, and turkey carcasses can be rendered and fed back to turkeys. In the United States some 37 per cent of broiler protein is derived from rendered by-products.

“The case of the United States is used here due to the fact that Jamaica currently imports a wide range of poultry products such as those made by Tyson Foods Inc, Oscar Meyer and Butterball to name a few, and also it is the largest exporter of poultry products internationally. It is the practice at the integrated companies in the US to develop the inedible material into feedstock for the animals rather than use corn or soy products. There is a direct correlation of the location of rendering facilities with broiler facilities across the US and particularly so in the south east where the bulk of our imported chicken and turkey products originate.”

It added: “The proposed protein recovery facility, as a means of animal raw material handling and processing, proposes a safe and integrated system that complies with the fundamental requirements of environmental quality and disease control.”

CB proposes to locate the new facility at its Longville Park, Clarendon compound.

—BO