Approach to Improve Edible Bird Nest Quality & Establishing Better Bird Nest Cleaning Process Facility through Best Value Approach

Abstract

Edible bird nest industries have existed for more than a century; however, it has been going through a few revolution cycles. As harvesting EBN from the natural habitat in the dark and dim limestone caves to the modern purpose-built swiftlet farms, the quality and quantity of the bird nests have risen to a new level. This success of changing the habitat of swiftlet colonies is revolutionary because the ease of rescuing bird nests from life-threatening experiences to a safe environment has improved. Furthermore, with a synthetic environment, the quality of bird nests has improved with decreased levels of pollution and the colony`s population increased due to better growth along with protection from predators. On the downside, edible bird nest cleaning processes experienced very few changes since the discovery of edible bird nests. The method of cleaning remains unchanged. Several machines have been introduced to replace human labor and the results are either ineffective or undesirable. In this study, existing practices were observed and analyzed by identifying the area of opportunity for improvement. A new proposed method has been implemented to enhance the quality and nutrients of the bird nests. The experimental methodology has been employed to analyzes a set of samples obtained from both cleaning methods. The results show a smaller expansion rate under the current method in processing edible bird nest; hence, the possibility of nutrients preserved has increased by 30% under the new method. The percentage of crude protein concentration in the newly improved method was 50.25% whereas in the traditional method, it was only 31.16%. This clearly indicates the difference of 19.09% nutrient lost between the new improved method and traditional cleaning method.

Food Safety Management System in Edible Bird’s Nest Industry: A Review

“…Cutters are strictly prohibited because they break easily during the cleaning process, creating a risk of cuts to the worker's hands and becoming a physical hazard to the product. In this step, raw bird nests will be soaked in clean water for further cleaning (Hong et al 2020). During the process, most dust or surface impurities will oat; the bird's nest starts to absorb the water and expand in size, increasing its original weight (Ma and Liu, 2012).…”

Edible Bird’s Nest: Recent Updates and Industry Insights Based On Laboratory Findings

“…Slight changes for processing steps were made as reported in different groups for the consideration of targeted nutrients, convenience, cost-effectiveness, and instruments availability. These processing steps are critical for preservation of nutritional values of EBN (Yew et al, 2014;Gan et al, 2017b;Hong et al, 2020;Tong et al, 2020). Firstly, the collected EBN is soaked in ultrapure water until softened to loosen the protein strands and cleaned by washing in water or ultrapure water, followed by manual removal of dirt, feathers, and egg shells using forceps (Yew et al, 2014).…”

“…Firstly, the collected EBN is soaked in ultrapure water until softened to loosen the protein strands and cleaned by washing in water or ultrapure water, followed by manual removal of dirt, feathers, and egg shells using forceps (Yew et al, 2014). The dust and lighter impurities floating in the water and EBN could be easily picked with forceps as the EBN expands in size after soaking in water (Hong et al, 2020). Then, the cleaned EBN is dried with or without controlled air circulation, heat, and humidity.…”

“…This process could lead to nutrients loss. The dried EBNs in cup shape is sorted and graded again based on their colour, cleanliness, and shape for packing (Hong et al, 2020).…”

“…Based on the common practice of current whole EBN processing, whole EBN is dried on a mold after soaking and cleaning, skipping extraction as shown in Figure 1 (Hong et al, 2020). The drying process after cleaning of EBN was discovered to be critical for sialic acids and antioxidants retention, in turn providing benefit to the quality and grade of EBN.…”