Rules are meant to be broken – Rethinking the regulations on the use of food waste as animal feed

Abstract

The magnitude of global food loss and waste requires a major overhaul of economies and food supply chains to reduce food insecurity, environmental burdens, and economic losses. Reducing food loss and waste and improving access and distribution to feed hungry people are the highest priorities. The next highest value is converting energy and nutrients in food waste (FW) materials into animal feeds to produce more food while recovering resources and reducing environmental costs. Governments in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have developed laws, regulations, economic incentives, subsidies, and infrastructure to require collection and recycling of all sources of FW and promote the conversion of a high proportion (>65 %) to safe animal feed. Many countries have extensive laws and regulations designed to prevent transmission of animal diseases that could occur from feeding FW, but those in the U.S. and E.U. are too restrictive based on current heat processing technology and monitoring systems available, resulting in only 5–10 % of available FW used in animal feeds. In China, despite difficulties controlling African swine fever virus, new government initiatives show promise for developing guidelines, infrastructure, and processes for diverting more of the 350 million tonnes of annual FW toward safe animal feed.