Modeling by-products and waste management in the meat industry

As currently designed, food supply chains (FSCs) still provide room for developing new business around the production, distribution, and delivery of primary food. Specifically, beyond primary production some FSCs provide an opportunity to design, plan, and optimize new chains based on the valorization of by-products and waste. A concrete example of such opportunities lies in the exploitation and distribution of by-products from the meat industry. Traditionally, different high-value meat cuts are distributed to retailers and consumers, but less attention is paid to by-products resulting from the slaughtering processes that generate waste and cost instead of being valorized as raw materials for other transformation industries. In order to exploit such business and to reduce the amount of waste associated with the meat industry, new paths can be followed according to the circular economy paradigm. Particularly, new storage, distribution, collection, that is, logistics operations and processes, must be designed and optimized. This chapter provides a high-level analytic model to design optimal networks between the primary meat chain and other supply chains using by-products. Some potential valorization chains are identified and tested through a sensitivity analysis, which highlights the impact of the logistic distance between chains in the pursuit of a circular economy model.