Feeding Chickens Stale Bread and Unsold Cookies for Zero-Carbon Eggs

In the mid-aughts, Ruud Zanders was running a company with more than $40 million in annual sales from 1 million hens across Europe laying hundreds of millions of eggs a year. But a combination of overleveraging, the credit crunch that foretold the Great Recession and an outbreak of avian influenza cost him his farm and his home. “We could have survived any one of these, but not all three,” Zanders says.

As he struggled to get back on his feet, Zanders sought a more sustainable way to produce eggs—something that would benefit people, birds and the environment. He came across research advocating a shift away from feeding animals with corn and other grains that humans might otherwise eat. Almost a third of the world’s grain is used as fodder for livestock. What if he could give laying hens food waste instead?