Disposition of poultry carcasses is an essential component of layer management. Historically, the composting of layer carcasses followed by application as a soil amendment has been utilized as a common agricultural practice. However, the current understanding on the effectiveness of composting on whole and ground up poultry carcasses is limited with respect to pathogen control. Therefore, we propose to test a series of composting based methodologies including composting plus secondary heat treatments (i.e. pasteurization) in order to identify the most effective practice with respect to pathogen control and improve the existing method (Co-PI: Maurice Pitesky; PI: Pramod Pandey).

Sponsor: Center for Food Animal Health (http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/cfah/)

Schematic of lab scale experiment