Recycled Food Waste Increasingly Fed To Japan’s Livestock

With the price of traditional animal feed skyrocketing, Japanese farmers are increasingly feeding their pigs and chickens with pellets made from recycled food scraps. Japan produces 20 million tons of food waste a year — five times as much as total world food aid — and most of it used to be dumped in landfills, where its decomposition produces the greenhouse gas methane. Now, following passage of a landmark 2001 law, the food industry recycles 70 percent of its waste, with half converted to feed, less than 5 percent to methane, and the rest to fertilizer. Livestock feed from recycled leftovers — mostly from restaurants and stores, which dump 11 tons a year — is 50 percent cheaper than industrial pellets, though the savings can be reaped only by farmers of poultry and pork, since sheep and cow feed is highly regulated to prevent mad cow disease. Recycled leftovers account for only one percent of feed at the moment, as Japan still imports 75 percent of its livestock feed. But the use of recycled food pellets is expected to rise significantly.