EU-pro­ject: Cre­at­ing value and redu­cing waste by exploit­ing anim­al by-products

The EU-fun­ded PROS­PARE (‘Pro­gress in sav­ing pro­teins and recov­er­ing energy’) pro­ject sets out to devel­op a tech­no­lo­gic­al plat­form for the multi-pur­pose pro­cessing of anim­al by-products (AB‑P), in par­tic­u­lar poultry. Using a nov­el biocata­lyt­ic approach, unmar­ket­able poultry remains can now be con­ver­ted into value-added pro­teins – pep­tide hydro­lys­ates – that can be used in mar­ket­able end-products. The pro­ject has also sought to widen cur­rent sci­entif­ic know­ledge of biocon­ver­sion tech­niques to pave the way for increased exploit­a­tion of anim­al residues on an indus­tri­al scale. The pro­ject star­ted out by examin­ing how value-added pep­tide mix­tures could be obtained from raw mater­i­als. It then sought to make this pro­cess avail­able to industry for lar­ger-scale pro­cessing. The ulti­mate object­ive was to make these pep­tide mix­tures exploit­able to the food, feed and bio­chem­ic­als (cos­met­ic and micro­bi­o­logy) sec­tors. The tech­no­logy plat­form has focused on bring­ing for­ward sev­er­al key bene­fits. The first is util­isa­tion – mak­ing AB‑P poten­tially inter­est­ing to a range of indus­tries through the devel­op­ment of a nov­el con­ver­sion pro­cess based on a biocata­lyt­ic approach. This in turn should cre­ate value, by con­vert­ing these residues into pep­tide hydro­lys­ates for food addit­ives and feed, for example. The accom­pa­ny­ing fat and tal­low (rendered anim­al fat) can also be exploited for renew­able energy and the pro­duc­tion of organ­ic chem­ic­als. Anoth­er focus of the pro­ject has been func­tion­al­ity. New ingredi­ents must meet con­sumer expect­a­tions if they are to suc­ceed in the mar­ket place. There­fore, the pro­ject looked at achiev­ing the neces­sary sens­ory char­ac­ter­ist­ics required for nutri­tion­al ingredi­ents – taste, aroma and digest­ib­il­ity – in order to improve their com­mer­cial poten­tial. The func­tion­al prop­er­ties of newly pro­duced food addit­ives have been invest­ig­ated by using stand­ard and new assay meth­ods. Import­antly, the pro­ject also pri­or­it­ised safety. A range of com­ple­ment­ary low-cost tech­niques for mon­it­or­ing micro­bi­al con­tam­in­a­tion and nov­el tra­cing tools for mycotox­in detec­tion have been developed, to ensure that developed food addit­ives com­ply with reg­u­la­tions. The PROS­PARE pro­ject rep­res­ents a rad­ic­al break­through because it demon­strates how pre­vi­ously unmar­ket­able AB‑P can be exploited through effi­cient biocon­ver­sion meth­ods and biocata­lysts (enzyme and/​or enzymat­ic com­pos­i­tions). It is also nov­el in that it is highly inter­dis­cip­lin­ary, apply­ing bio­tech­no­lo­gic­al, chem­ic­al, bio­phys­ic­al, immun­o­lo­gic­al and tox­ic­o­lo­gic­al expert­ise. In addi­tion, it has involved indus­tri­al part­ners who have tri­alled the pro­posed tech­no­lo­gies for eval­u­ation. The first pilot pro­duc­tion plants (in Rus­sia and Bel­gi­um) achieved the required stand­ard of full pro­ductiv­ity and sus­tain­ab­il­ity. It is expec­ted that this tech­no­lo­gic­al break­through will trans­form AB‑P treat­ment and help to reduce unne­ces­sary waste. While exploit­ing such products safely has con­sist­ently been a major chal­lenge, the new pro­cessing tech­no­lo­gies developed through PROS­PARE should meet broad EU food safety require­ments while being eco­nom­ic­ally sus­tain­able. Source: European Commission