Every pound a broiler chick puts on up to market distribution uses a gallon of water. Multiply that by the nearly 10 billion birds produced in the U.S. each year — predominantly in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic states — and that’s a small lake’s worth of H2O.

Much of that is the byproduct of processing, and managing that nutrient- and solids-dense water sustainably and economically is a priority for the entire poultry supply chain.

Auburn University’s Brendan Higgins has been studying the options for nearly a decade, and has found that poultry processing water byproducts can be used boost crops — even lettuce, which is especially vulnerable to contamination. Mindful of the fact that every site is unique, he and his team have vetted several options for processors to consider, primarily using technology that’s familiar to the industry and may already be at-hand.

Higgins explains his research and its applications to the industry in this episode of MeatingPod.

Listeners who are interesting in learning more should check out these papers written by Dr. Higgins and his team on the topic they have dubbed "PoultryPonics":

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960852425001932

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301479725005353

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsestwater.4c00262