Abstract:
Purpose: Some literature on feeding kitchen food waste (KFW) to domestic animals is available.
However, the quantifi-cation of such consumption by those animals is limited. This study attempts
to investigate how various domes-tic animals contribute to disposing of the KFW by feeding in
rural and semi-urban areas of the eastern province of Sri Lanka.
Method: Simple random sampling was used to select 75 households from the Sammanthurai DS
division. The KFW was collected, segregated, and weighed from each of the households. The
weight of KFW fed to domestic and stray animals was recorded before feeding. A semi-structured
questionnaire was also used to collect the necessary data from the households selected.
Results: The study found that the KFW accounted for 49 %. 25 % of the households disposed of
their KFW by feeding to the domestic animals and another 3 % was consumed by stray animals.
The village chickens consumed the highest KFW (59.5 %) per day. Each village chicken, cow,
other birds, dog, and cat consumed 47.8 g, 695 g, 43.3 g, 128 g, and 91.7 g of KFW per day,
respectively, on average. By feeding the KFW to domestic animals, the reduction in greenhouse
gas emission was estimated to be 871 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) per day.
Conclusion: A quarter of the households fed their KFW to domestic animals they grow. The
village chickens were the highest contributor to the disposal of KFW by consuming them. Feeding
KFW to domestic animals reduces greenhouse gas emissions and contributes to rural food security
through bioconversion.
