In a foreign animal disease outbreak, disposing of mass mortalities remains largely limited to composting, incineration, burial, LAN dfilling, and rendering

This Cooperative Agreement award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) under the Plant and Animal Disease, Pest Control, and Animal Care Federal Grant Program (CFDA 10.025) will investigate the feasibility of using thermal dehydration to dispose of poultry carcasses and products during a disease outbreak. The $171,189 project, running from September 2024 to September 2026, will conduct full-scale tests to study operational issues like pathogen destruction, throughput, and environmental impact. The goal is to provide APHIS with use protocols and process improvement recommendations for thermal dehydration as an efficient, economically feasible, and preferred method of poultry mortality disposal. This work will enhance carcass disposal capabilities, especially for poultry operations lacking traditional disposal resources, and support the use of thermal dehydration as an alternative to incineration near high-density areas.

These options have many limitations, including space, siting, equipment, cost, biosecurity risk associated with transporting contaminated material, and facility capacity limits. There is a great need for alternative methods that can address these ongoing challenges. Thermal dehydration is a recently developed method for the daily disposal of broilers, laying hens, and hatchery waste. The process simultaneously mixes, shreds, aerates, and heats the carcass materials at 194 °F to produce a stable, odor-free, and sterile meat powder. The purpose of this agreement is to investigate the feasibility of processing poultry carcasses and poultry products via thermal dehydration in a disease outbreak. We propose to conduct full-scale tests to study the operational issues (pathogen destruction, maximum throughput, and environmental impact) related to processing contaminated poultry carcasses and poultry products via thermal dehydration. The proposed project will yield critical research data on thermal dehydration disposal procedures for broilers, hens, and EGG disposal in a disease outbreak, including operation parameters, cost analysis, logistic requirements, planning considerations, biosafety considerations, and evaluation of environmental impact. This work will deliver use protocols and process improvement recommendations for USDA aphis to identify the potential scenario where thermal dehydration technology can be used as an efficient, economically feasible, and preferred method of poultry mortality disposal in a disease outbreak. The proposed project will enhance carcass disposal capability and capacity, especially for poultry operations that lack land, equipment, or other supplies required by traditional poultry mortality disposal techniques. The proposed air emission and economic analysis will support the use of thermal dehydration as a practical alternative to incineration for poultry operations near high-density housing or other public areas that could be affected by air emissions. The proposed investigation on EGG thermal dehydration will improve the capability of unusable EGG disposal in a disease outbreak for large poultry operations.