YOO & THE CITY: A helpful part of the chicken that ain’t for eating

This article was originally published on 6/7/2007

Which part of chicken do you dig?

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FRANK NIEMEIR/ajc.com

It might look like coffee grounds, but Chick A Poo is for fertilizing purposes. The product comes from poultry droppings, but it’s been deodorized so that it’s a pleasant-smelling plant food.

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FRANK NIEMEIR/ajc.com

PICKING UP POO: You can pick up your own Chick A Poo at Publix, Kroger and Whole Foods. Its suggested retail price is $4.99.

Breast? (For dieters.) Neck? (It makes your gumbo yummier.) Gizzard? (Tons get shipped to China for its billion consumers.)

What about droppings?

Folks, a company in South Atlanta wants you to get to know your chickens better.

A new fertilizer, “Chick A Poo, ” is made from you know what.

“Made in America by American Chickens, ” says the product label.

Your nostrils will be happy. Chick A Poo doesn’t smell, other than a faint odor reminiscent of an exotic spice shop.

Animal dung has done wonders for the human race. It’s plant food. It makes grapes grow sweeter, portobello mushrooms meatier. Horses and cows have been popular contributors. Some prefer poultry’s gift because of a high concentration in nitrogen.

Unlike other dung, the particles packaged in Atlanta are sold in groceries. The texture resembles another grocery item —- instant coffee, the dark, roasted brew. Chick A Poo currently comes in a clear, one-quart plastic container.

Thanks to technological advances, the chicken feces are deodorized mechanically inside a warehouse near Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

That’s a real advantage, says 87-year-old Frank Cody of Dunwoody, who founded Organic-X, which produces Chick A Poo. Other fecal-based compost available in the market carry a scent that quickly attacks the nostrils.

Not Chick A Poo. Later this year, the company will produce 40-pound, 20-pound and 5-pound bags of the fertilizer. By then it will be available in a spray bottle, too.

“It’ll smell like room fragrance, ” Cody said.

Who’d know more about recycling feces than Cody whose previous company, Genesis Environmental Research Corp, turned garbage into fuel pellets or “a biomass product made of renewable substances —- generally recycled wood waste, ” according to the Pellet Fuels Institute.

Cody’s new company invested $1 million in building a plant in Griffin. That place has since closed, and Cody is looking for a permanent location for Chick A Poo in metro Atlanta.

Chick A Poo has been around for five years, an obscure, kitschy piece of merchandise that was hard to spot in stores. In January, Cody and his partners launched a heavy marketing campaign. They began deodorizing the feces and hired a veteran grocery consultant, Ken Escoe, to be Organic-X president.

The raw material, in the form of pasteurized moist pellets, arrives in white sacks from Perdue, a poultry conglomerate that operates plants in Maryland, near Chesapeake Bay.

Despite what company officials say, please don’t eat this stuff. It’s not something the manufacturer recommends. But a former Chick A Poo salesmen used to put it in his mouth during his pitch. He’s reportedly still alive. (No one could locate him for this article though.)

Company officials say they’re particularly happy with their invention because they feel they’re greening the environment in their own way, the thing to do in an era of global warming.

Most importantly, no chickens were harmed during the production.