Animal-friendly smoked sausage developed by Kipster

Kipster and supermarket chain Lidl have teamed up to market a revolutionary smoked sausage. The campaign group WakkerDier calls the sausage 'completely good' and it is the first sausage with a 3-star Beter Leven quality mark from the Dutch Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

After the animal-friendly produced and CO2-neutral eggs, Kipster from Oirlo comes up with a new unique product. This smoked sausage is so special because it is made from laying hens and roosters, instead of the usual meat chickens.

Roosters

Roosters are generally considered worthless in the food industry. They lay no eggs and have less meat than meat chickens. This means that about 40 million roosters are gassed every year. Thanks to the new smoked sausage, the roosters are allowed to live. They are housed on an organic farm, where they live longer than an organic meat chicken.

Leaving the roosters alive is not directly better for the environment. They eat a lot of feed compared to the meat they put on, and more feed means more pressure on the environment. Kipster chooses to let the roosters live anyway, so as not to waste live animals.

With their laying hens, Kipster serves only residual streams, such as failed baked goods from large bakeries. Not having to grow corn or soy for chicken feed creates a climate-neutral egg, even when the carbon footprint of the roosters is included.

Laying hens for meat

Aging laying hens also get a new use thanks to the smoked sausage. Usually, after about 600 days, they no longer lay good eggs and are then slaughtered. In a positive case they are used for chicken soup or animal feed, but often they end up in the garbage. Kipster now uses the laying hens not only for eggs, but also for meat.

The animal-friendly smoked sausage is available at all LIDL stores in the Netherlands.

Source: Dagblad De Limburger, Sustainable Business