Wondering what you can feed your pigs? There’s now an app for that!

Our campaign, The Pig Idea, encourages the feeding of surplus food that is no longer fit for human consumption, to pigs.  We aim to lift the EU ban on feeding catering waste, or swill, to pigs.

Under current law certain food can be fed to pigs, for example, bread, dairy, fruit and vegetables. But the legislation is confusing and results in lots of permissible food not being fed to pigs because people are worried about getting it wrong. To address this, we have developed a prototype web app to help food businesses determine whether their surplus food is suitable for animal feed and navigate the relevant legislation.

The United Nations estimates that if farmers around the world fed their livestock on the food that we currently waste and on agricultural by-products, enough grain would be liberated to feed an extra three billion people. To help food businesses contribute to such a grand waste-free future, Feedback (as part of the Refresh Community of Experts) have developed the app for businesses to clarify which surplus food is suitable, and what needs to be done to send the food to animal feed in a safe and legal way.

The prototype tool is currently being validated by UK stakeholders and will be converted to the Spanish and Dutch contexts in the next year and a half. If you are interested in finding out more, or commenting on the test version, please get in touch with karen@feedbackglobal.org.