Post-pandemic sustainability of the Canadian pork industry: upgrading by-products to added-value goods. From feed to food and advanced purified hydrogels for cosmetics and health

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The Canadian pork industry represents a considerable industry of 26,3 billion of CDN$ annually, involving at least 25,000 Canadians workers. Already before the pandemic, it faced many challenges including high volatility of the prices due to the emergence of African swine fever in China in 2018, followed by the imposition of a ban on Canadian pork by China in 2019. Then the COVID-19 pandemic arrived with its rapidly evolving nature virus, inducing additional challenges to the Canadian pork meat industry. The limitations on animal exportation, logistics restrictions, and the shutting down of slaughterhouses, restaurants, and food services adversely affected all stages of the meat supply chain. Farmers were unable to find a suitable market to sell their live animals. Meat processing capacity also decreased due to the closure of the processing plants. Unfortunately, the end of the pandemic is not the end of a long cycle of crisis with the economic recovery in 2021 which has resulted in an almost 50% increase in the prices of ingredients like corn and wheat, due mainly to the explosion in Chinese demand. To complicate the situation, the easing of restrictions linked to COVID-19 is likely to support the economic recovery, pushing up the prices of oil, gas and, consequently, grain fertilizers on the one hand, and on the other hand, the threat of the Omicron variant could generate a new crisis in the industry. The global animal protein industry faces an unprecedented challenge with population growth that is predicted to increase food demand by 48.6%1. Globally, about 44% of pig raised for meat is not consumed by humans. This project is expected to tremendously increase the competitiveness of the Canadian pork industry, and its overall sustainability, by reusing and add value locally to these nonedible by-products. We propose to use efficient protein extraction and transformation to produce: 1) bioactive peptides as replacement of antibiotics in feed and additives in food, 2) metabolites coming from biomass fermentation of the by-product, and 3) highly injectable hydrogels able to gel rapidly and deliver cells and growth factors that stimulate local regeneration in the field of regenerative medicine and cell transplantation.