Does the idea of eating chicken feet, pig ears, and beef tripe sound appealing?
It depends on which part of the world you are from.
Here in Asia, we enjoy sucking on gelatinous braised chicken feet (凤爪 or phoenix talons) at dim sum restaurants; biting into spicy, crispy pig ears served cold with sesame oil dressing (凉拌猪耳朵); and chewing beef tripe in a delicious bone broth with rice noodles and herbs (Phở Sách bò). These are beloved dishes we have grown up eating.
Many Asian cultures practise “nose-to-tail” eating, where almost every part of a slaughtered animal is consumed. To us, they aren’t waste or byproducts of meat processing, but delectable, pocket-friendly prized cuts.
This love for offcuts cannot be underestimated. As a food distributor in Asia since 2008, Oceanus has observed a growing demand for offcuts.
We get asked for up to 100 containers of chicken feet, per month. This translates to 90,000 frozen chicken feet or 45,000 pairs of chicken feet. We think this is only the tip of the iceberg, and the demand is even greater for beef tripe.
Surprisingly and shockingly (to Asians), this love for offcuts is not matched in the Western world. Oceanus’s trading partners in Europe and the Americas report discarding tonnes of perfectly edible chicken feet per month due to a lack of local demand. Clearly, there is a huge untapped market.
In 2023, the global food crisis reached a record high with 783 million people facing chronic hunger. A significant factor is food waste: about 1.3 billion tons of edible food are lost or wasted along the food supply chain.
This level of waste is something that Oceanus, as the Asian leader in food security, is unable to stomach.
So in 2023, our subsidiary Asia Fisheries kick-started efforts to find a win-win situation by hunting for western producers for eager buyers in Southeast Asia.
Our 36 subsidiaries and network of business and government contacts in 10 countries introduced us to interested meat producers, and we spent most of 2023 assessing like-minded partners.
One of the largest poultry producers in Turkey is now our supplier of chicken feet. The additional processing of chicken feet to customer requirements demanded changes to their usual way of working. However, we alleviated these concerns by transferring knowledge from our subsidiary SinoFood, which has decades of experience in processing chicken feet for the multi-million dollar Chinese market.
As a result, our partner is now able to sell the offcuts at an attractive price for Asian buyers. These days, their containers of chicken feet are promptly snapped up by our buyers.
“We aim to grow this business exponentially,” says Daphne Lim, CEO of Asia Fisheries. “Currently, we are discussing with producers in Central America. Besides knowledge transfer, we are prepared to go as far as investing in additional equipment required for them to process offcuts efficiently. This is a testament to our commitment to building long-term relationships with our partners and reducing food waste.”
Southeast Asia’s ravenous appetite is only likely to grow as populations and disposable incomes rise. Chicken feet is just the start of our foray into offcuts. Imagine all the other unloved offcuts (nose, necks, heads, hearts, intestines etc) that could find a healthy market here in Southeast Asia.
If you are a meat producer that is still throwing away potential food sources each month, why not consider working with Oceanus to reduce food waste together?