It was Koichi Takahashi's dream to create a sustainable society through recycling and regeneration. His dream came true when he built a company that turns food waste into high-quality pig feed. In his company, Japan Food Ecology Center, Takahashi made use of the popular Japanese practice, "fermentation".
When Takahashi started, the pigs were growing slowly and they had too much fat, but "after a series of failures", Takahashi and a team of experts found the right nutrition content for the pigs. As a result of Takahashi's determination, he now supplies many farms like Azumino Eco Farm with "ecofeed" and the farms supply "eco-pork" to restaurants, supermarkets and department stores around Japan.
Farmers benefit a lot from ecofeed because it's cheaper than conventional feed, and according to one review, "it's shockingly tender, with just the right ratio of fat to juicy muscle."