In Japan there is a great tradition on the fermented foods front. Now even food waste is fermented to obtain sustainable feed to be used in livestock farming: thanks to a unique fermentation method, pigs can be fed with waste from the food industry, or with expired and unsold products from supermarkets, thus saving money, reducing waste and limiting emissions. But also producing meat with better quality standards. A project that has a protagonist: Koichi Takahashi, founder of the Japan Food Ecology Center. “I wanted to build a model project for the circular economy – he explains to the BBC – Instead of relying on imports for feed, we can effectively use local food waste”.
The entrepreneur, who has a veterinary background, has focused on his initiative since 1998, when the Japanese government launched a project to produce feed from the recovery of resources that would otherwise be wasted. And he has placed fermentation, an object of scientific study in Japan since the 19th century, when the government began to invest heavily in the construction of new industries based on ancient practices such as the production of sake and soy sauce, at the center of his experiments. Takahashi has therefore used his veterinary knowledge to create a liquefied and fermented food product with lactic acid for pigs: a product that can remain at room temperature for up to 10 days and that generates 70% less greenhouse gas emissions than traditional feed.
The Japan Food Ecology Center is located in Sagamihara, two hours by train from Tokyo, and processes about 40 tons of food waste every day: trucks loaded with food arrive from large-scale retail trade, especially from minimarkets that are always open where the flow of ready-made – and highly perishable – meals is significant, as well as from the food industries. Bringing waste here costs less than incinerating it, but even for farmers, eco-feed costs about half as much as traditional feed and they can also customize the recipe based on their needs, such as increasing the fat or muscle mass of pigs. The ingredients therefore vary from day to day, but there is a fixed point, whey, a by-product of the dairy industry, just as the waste from the mass production of gyoza and sushi is always present. Tokyo imports almost two-thirds of its food and three-quarters of its livestock feed. Yet every year Japan throws away 28.4 million tons of food, much of it edible. Takahashi studied how to give a second life to this production, generating positive impacts on the agri-food chain, on the environment and even on society itself.
