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.
Keywords: Bird nest cleaning, bird nest processing, edible bird nest, swiftlet, best value
approach.