US Hydrolyzed Feather Meal

Description

Hydrolyzed poultry feathers or feather meal is produced by hydrolyzing clean, undecomposed feathers from slaughtered poultry.

The most important factor affecting the quality of hydrolyzed poultry feathers is the extent of hydrolyzation. If less than 75 percent of the crude protein content is digestible by the pepsin digestibility method, then hydrolyzation was incomplete and protein quality is reduced.

Pressurized cooking of feathers is the primary method of processing used in preparing feather meal. Some bacteria have been identified that produce a feather digesting enzyme, that will convert the protein fraction into a digestible form (Shih, 1993). Pepsin digestibility is used as method of assessing the quality of feather meal. Normally a pepsin digestibility of 75 % is considered to be a minimum value to assure that the feather meal has been adequately processed.