description
- The animal by-products (AB-P) industry has always been a vital part of the world food production chain, providing valuable new products and reducing pollution loads. Anyway, the treatment of animal bioresources requires new and safe biotechnological tools and processes are developed. PROSPARE aims at developing a technological platform for multi-purpose processing of AB-P, in particular poultry ones, flexible enough to be tailored to different industrial sector needs. Using a novel biocatalytic approach unmarketable poultry secondary resources will be converted into value added peptide hydrolysates leading to marketable end-products, with programmable nutritional properties, and biodiesel. Innovative techniques will be used for the molecular characterization of the hydrolyzates. Safety issues associated with new technologies will be properly addressed and novel methods to assess the healthiness of intermediate and end-products developed and compared to standard ones. Platform feasibility will be demonstrated by scaling up to pre-industrial pilot level. The technological innovations will allow obtaining a range of products with programmed functional properties and sensory characteristics that will appeal to consumer objective and subjective requests. Functional characteristics to be targeted will include antioxidant, prebiotic, antimicrobial, antihypertensive properties. The outcome of the PROSPARE project is likely to generate a significant technological breakthrough in the field of AB-P treatment. This will therefore have an impact on the current Regulatory Framework both in EU and RF. An important aim of the project is to prepare the ground for the evolution of the Commission directives in that context. Moreover, taking advantage of this international cooperation, recommendations on how to harmonise, in the longer term, both legislations will also be delivered to the Commission.