2015/01/01 by Xavier Malher, Malher, Xavier, Bernard Coudurier +3
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Broiler #Filière alimentaire #Food Waste Reduction and Sustainability #Food supply chain #Poulet de chair #Processed Animal Proteins #Protéines animales transformées
paper · doi:10.15454/1.4622743460346223e12
openalex publication_date 2015/01/01 · openalex created_date 2024/08/19 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This study was conducted as a first attempt to define, describe and quantify food losses from harvest to retail in the broiler supply chain in France. Food losses were defined as product discarded from human consumption for sanitary reasons (mortality between harvesting and stunning and condemnation at slaughter house) or oriented to by-products unusable for feeding production animals. The study drew the technical tracks from the live animal to the end products, with the various associated by-products coming out along the slaughter and processing lines, and their uses. Determinants for food losses were found to be either technical, economical, regulatory or organizational. Issuing from the representation of the different slaughter and processing steps, a calculation sheet was implemented to estimate the share of food losses according to various hypotheses, such as percentage of carcasses devoted to cutting, or percentage of giblets valued for human consumption. Quantification of food losses is difficult to perform due to the confidential character of business data and the stages of marketing and retailing remained poorly documented. This preliminary study needs to be discussed with a larger professional audience and challenged by further research on this topic of increasing public attention.