"Whole Egg Waste" - Unfit for Humans, But Fine for Dogs and Cats
By Dr. Becker
Last year, an economic development program in Canada awarded a large grant to help a former egg processing plant re-open as a business that converts egg waste into pet food ingredients.
The plant, which had been closed for four years, now processes whole egg waste from egg grading plants to produce powdered pet food ingredients.
It also extracts egg whites from discarded egg shells and produces liquid egg white that is used as a binding agent in pet food.
According to the company, the powdered egg product has up to 50 percent protein, and the egg white binding agent is 80 percent protein.
Government officials feel the grant is helping to turn "… something that was considered waste unto a usable product."
They also hope the re-opening of the plant will benefit the community and create jobs.
I'm all for finding ways to make use of food waste products, for example, as an energy source or as fertilizer.
But I'm certainly not in favor of repurposing waste as nutrition for dogs and cats.
In the U.K., egg and egg products not fit or intended for human consumption are considered animal by-products.
They fall into the same category as manure and digestive tract content, hides and skins, wool, feathers, semen, ova and embryos, shellfish shells and "other products of animal origin."i
"Whole Egg Waste"
According to a U.S. pet food ingredient manufacturer who sells dried egg productii , there are three main sources of the whole egg waste used in pet food: 'Grader,' 'Breaker,' and 'Hatchery.'
Grader egg waste comes from egg processing facilities that sell to supermarkets. These eggs need to look appealing when grocery shoppers open the carton. Any egg with a cracked or dirty shell is tossed into an 'inedible' bin.
Breaker egg waste comes from facilities that use eggs in prepared or frozen mixes used by restaurants, bakers and other food service outlets. The waste that comes from breaker eggs is mostly egg white left after the yolk is separated.
These two types of whole egg waste are, according to the pet food ingredient company, collected daily, kept refrigerated, and dried within a day of collection.
Hatchery waste is liquid from eggs that didn't hatch. It tends to lead to foul odors in the dried egg product, so it presumably isn't used as often as the other two types of whole egg waste.
All three categories of eggs have been deemed unfit for human consumption...
To continue reading this article, please click on the link below.
http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2012/04/06/egg-product-as-pet-food.aspx
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