(Radio Iowa) – Studies find 30 to 40-percent of food that’s produced is never eaten, and researchers are looking for possible solutions that could be implemented in Iowa livestock lots to help prevent so much food waste. University of Minnesota Professor Jerry Shurson favors turning leftovers into animal feed. Another option Shurson suggests would be feeding livestock byproducts from bakeries that are safe to eat but don’t meet certain quality standards to get them on our grocery shelves.

“Chips and cookies and cereal could easily go into animal feeds,” Shurson says, “and many of them are, but we need to move more of that type of material into animal feeds, and at a greater rate than what we’re doing.” Shurson is in the university’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences. He’s hosting a virtual international conference this week to educate people in feed and feeding industries about the value of food waste for livestock in the backdrop of food, climate, and sustainability challenges.

“Taking leftover parts from animal carcasses after slaughter or after harvesting and recycling it to rendered animal byproducts that can be used as high protein feed ingredients for, not only food-producing animals but for many of our pet foods,” he says. Shurson says nutrients from byproducts produced by grain milling, meat packing, and milk processing industries, can easily be turned into pig feed and more, as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions from food waste rotting in landfills. Iowa producers raise about 50-million hogs a year, most of which are processed at 14 plants across the state.