Anyone have restaraunts save scraps for pigs and/or chickens, etc

reneeearle · #1 10/02/05, 09:04 AM

I have considered checking with local restaurants to see if they would save scraps for my critters. Has anyone done this? What has been the reason for not being able to? Maybe a good spot for coffee and egg shells for gardens too. Are any of these ideas against health inspection regulations?
Renee

palani · #2 10/02/05, 09:13 AM

Not sure but I think feeding table scraps is banned because of trichinosis and maybe madcow concerns.

TexasArtist · #3 10/02/05, 10:02 AM

When I worked in a restaurant we had a lady we'd save the scraps for and she had to quit getting them after awhile because she found out some of her pigs picked up hepatitis. I don't remember what strain it was but I remember the ag. folks told her to stop feeding her pigs that way or they wouldnt let her sell the meat anymore. Might be a concern you look into.

Sparticle · #4 10/02/05, 10:18 AM

I have a nice lady that runs the deli in my building and every Friday she makes taco salad. She saves the lettuce and tomato ends for the pigs. She also freezes extra bread and bananas for them till I can pick them up.

Ken Scharabok · #5 10/02/05, 10:34 AM

It is against USDA regulations for any swine entering the commerical market to be fed table scraps/plate scrapings. That include those raised on a small scale to be sold off the property. What you feed a swine for your own comsumption is still pretty well up to you.

Local place buys catfish from commerical fishermen on KY Lake and sells fillets to restaurants. He use to have someone come by the pick up the heads, guts, skins, etc. for feeding to his swine. Free disposal for him. USDA stopped that also. Now the trimmings have to go to a landfill.

I suspect a restaurant wouldn't want to take the chance due to liability questions. About like someone retrieving a hamburger past it sales time from a dumpster behind a fast food restaurant and then suing the restaurant if they become sick from it. Had a nephew who worked for one place in which any edible trash went down a commerical-size garbage disposal.

Produce trimmings from restaurants or trimmings and overaged produced from supermarkets??? You can ask, but don't be surprised if the answer is no.

Problem with egg shells in the compost bin is they take about forever to breakdown. Unless you had some way to pretty well powder them I suspect it wouldn't be worth the effort. However, you might crush them up fine and add to cattle feed. I hand crush mine up when completely dry and put them at the base of a birdfeeder. The birds pretty well keep them cleaned up. You might also save them for someone who has chickens.

#6 10/02/05, 10:37 AM

Check the Bakeries in your area or bread stores you can sometimes get a truck full of old stale bread for cheap it dose cost but not much if someone dont allready get it

TerryJ · #7 10/02/05, 11:16 AM

Where I work we made pizza ovens, at one time. I would bring home the pizzas all they did was cook them and throw them out. We also make icecream machinrs the test the machines daily, then pour the product down the drain. At one time I was getting 50 - 100 Gallons per day. I put it in my bulk tank until feeding time they were waiting for me everyday.

Charleen · #8 10/02/05, 11:34 AM

A local pig farmer regularly goes to the Wonder Bread Thrift Store and fills his pick-up truck bed with loaves of bread and rolls. He buys them at a huge discount. They're still in wrappers, so, technically, it is a legal sale of food. These are not scraps.

I don't usually eat in restaurants, and wouldn't want my pigs to eat food from there either.

john in la · #9 10/02/05, 12:05 PM

Table scraps from your house is fine for a self consume pig but I would not use scraps from any where else.

It is legal to feed butcher pigs stale bread and out of date milk. Both must be in original cartons.

Another source of feed for a self consume pig is feed spillage from a dairy farm. In fact you can find dairy farmers that will give you free feed from dairy house spillage if you split the pig with them.

sancraft · #10 10/02/05, 04:31 PM

My local grocery store would save veggies for me, i.e. the corn husk and parts of the cabbage people pull off, broken broccoli, etc. The butcher would also save fat for me to render down to make lard for soap and to make suet for the bird feeders.

skinner · #11 10/02/05, 04:59 PM

It is my understanding that tooth picks left on plates will hang up in pigs intestines & kill them.

skinner

RedneckPete · #12 10/02/05, 07:36 PM

All nonsense. I’ve been getting scrapings from the local restaurants for years, never had a problem. I ask them not to include pork if possible, and have raised many a fat and healthy pig on this diet.

Horror stories abound. I would like to see documented proof that doing this on a small scale for local consumption is a problem.

As far a stale bread and out of date milk, I know I wouldn’t loose one second sleep over that issue. I would feed a pig bread even if it were covered with mold. The pig doesn’t care, why should I?

These regulations are put in place to prevent a hog farmer from feeding out thousands of pigs on the scraps of all the local restaurants. In this case, one bad burger could be mixed into the feed of hundreds or even thousands of pigs.

Most of the readers of this site are not about to attempt a large scale hog operation on the scraps of local restaurants.

Pete

crystalniche · #13 10/02/05, 07:53 PM

When my DS was in high school--FFA--two of his buddies, brothers, did this. They had a bakery saving their day old bakery products for them to feed to their pigs. Every morning the boys would take their pickup to the bakery and load up all the previous days leftovers. It would sit in the bed of their truck all day until they went home and fed it to their pigs. During the day the kids would go out to the truck and snack on the leftovers---so did the Sea Gulls. We told our DS that he had to stay away from that stuff and never to eat any of it. He didn't listen. One day the three of them were very sick with some kind of stomach problem. More of the kids in their class came down with it. Turned out it was from them snacking on the leftover bakery products in the pickup. They never touched it again. I don't know if it hurt the pigs any tho.

gccrook · #14 10/02/05, 09:35 PM

I haven't looked this up, but I believe that in some states you can legally feed table scraps to your pigs if you get a permit, and it has to be boiled/cooked at a certain temperature for a specific period of time before feeding.

#15 10/02/05, 10:45 PM

Gc does have a point there. You can pick up restuarant and bakery food scraos for your pigs but you must re-cook it before serving it to them. But you can feed it straight to the chickens. My neighbor who lives across the road from us would bring home a couple of gallon cans full of table scraps that she would collect while working at the local high school cafeteria. She would give them to me and I would dump it out for my chickens. In return I would supply her with fresh eggs every week. Those chickens shore luved them scraps.

Quint · #16 10/03/05, 03:08 AM

Having worked in the kitchen side of the food service industry I can say that for myself saving scraps for someone would be a big pain in the backside and I sure wouldn't want to do it. The trash is the trash and the last thing I would be wanting to do is separate stuff. No time for such things in a busy restaurant setting.

I would occasionally save meat trimmings for my dog when I was cutting steaks and stuff but that was it.

River Rest · #17 10/03/05, 05:46 AM

This is off subject but this thread reminds me of a story my dad told us.

My Dad was a Supply Seargent in the Army back in the 50's. One day the officer in charge of the mess hall came to him. It seems that he was missing a lot of flatware from the mess hall & he (the officer) would be held accountable for them. So Dad said, "Come with me". He drove him out to a local pig farm, stopped at the barn & told the officer to go in & tell the farmer what he wanted. Well,the officer gave him a puzzled look but went on into the barn. Later, he returned with all the flatware he needed. The farmer got the flatware mixed in with scraps from restaurants!

ihedrick · #18 10/03/05, 06:14 AM

A local pizza place saves me the left over produce stuff that they put in salads and such. No meat goes in the bucket; which I leave there (with lid) and when it is half full they call and I pick it up. The stuff is usually the ends of tomatoes and lettuce, some onion (pigs usually separate out) and maybe some french bread. It is a treat for the pigs and I know the pizza guy really well and believe he would not put in anything bad into the bucket.

buspete · #19 10/03/05, 09:04 AM

I was cautioned against it by a local guy (old-time Yankee farmer) who said there is sometimes broken glass etc in the swill from restaurants.

I know of several donut shops and bakeries that save the day-old stuff for local pig farmers. All you have to do is ask!

When I was a kid, I worked in a small Mom and Pop general store/butcher shop. Some of the meat we sold came from the owner's family farm, and we used to save all the prduce scraps for him to take home for the pigs. (that was a few years ago though, don't even know if it was legal at the time)

Jenn · #20 10/03/05, 12:32 PM

Our favorite Chinese place owner would keep the too old rice in a bag in the freezer for us and give it to us when we ate there, I'd give her eggs. Probably not any plate scrapings though. If I were trying to save more money on chicken feed I'd ask if they'd keep a slop bucket for me but it'd be hard to collect it daily if that's what (as I'd expect) they'd need.