Rendering plants recycle dead animals into products such as pet food and biodiesel. Slaughterhouse remains and waste are the main contributors, but dead animals from farms, zoos, and veterinary clinics also end up there. The final products contain heavy metals, pesticides, and other toxic waste. The process also produces products for human consumption such as meat by-products and tallow. The industry is necessary to solve the animal remains problem, but better regulation is needed to ensure safe products.
A rendering plant is a processing operation where dead animals are recycled into products from human food to biodiesel. Slaughterhouse remains and waste are the main contributors to these facilities. Heads, hooves, bones, blood, offal (internal organs) and anything else that cannot be used ends up in a sardine.
Dead animal carcasses from farming and confinement operations are the secondary contributors. A render plant will also take dead horses, llamas and other farm and zoo animals. The remains of dogs and cats, road kills (deer, skunks, rats and raccoons) also end up here. Veterinary clinics and animal shelters also rely on processing plants for their euthanized animals. They also accept return or rejected meat from supermarkets.
Most edible rendering products are sold to feed manufacturers as a source of protein, calcium and phosphorus. Manufacturers then take this “feed enhancer”, add ingredients to eventually sell as pet food and livestock feed.
Animals that are not slaughtered or euthanized often die of some form of cancer, encephalitis or organ failure. Sodium pentobarbital was administered to the euthanized animals. This barbiturate shows up in dog and cat food and livestock feed because the rendering process doesn’t break it down.
Even the raw materials end up in the “soup” yield. Heavy metals (cattle ID tags, surgical pins), flea collars (organic phosphate insecticides), contraband DDT-laced fish oil, Styrofoam, and plastic from rejected supermarket meat packaging are common ingredients.
The final products also identified antibiotics, hormones and pesticides. Some chemicals, like sulfate, actually become concentrated during the rendering process. It is an inevitable concession that toxic waste ends up in making the final products of the plants.
The goal of any rendering plant is financial, and it isn’t cost-effective to spend the time sorting out intestines, eyeballs, feathers, hair, bones, or rancid restaurant grease. It is not mandatory to identify animals that died of natural causes for edible rendering.
The final product will dictate the procedure used in the rendering plant. One process cooks the soup beyond boiling, then removes the moisture. It is ground into powder for bone meal or recycled meat for pets, zoos and farm animals.
Dairy animals, cattle, pigs, poultry, sheep and fish all consume the products of the processing plant on a daily basis. Most of these animals are natural herbivores, but commercially they have become carnivores and very often cannibals.
The rendering plant also prepares products considered to “make edible” for humans. This process involves shredding edible materials (mainly fat), cooking them at low temperatures, and then separating the liquid and fat from the solids through centrifugal separation.
Due to the fear of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), spinal cord is now banned in the processing of products for human consumption. Due to lack of oversight, however, proper inspections are not performed and these types of items are not separated properly.
Human edible yield includes meat by-products, chicken fat, beef fat, lard, fish oil, fish meal, bone meal, and tallow. The esters, found in beers, also come from rendering. Tallow is used in many foods, flavorings, and pharmaceuticals. Inedible tallow products are wax products, crayons and soaps.
Other end products include all forms of cosmetics, toothpastes, nasal sprays, shampoos, creams and ointments. Plastics, rubber products, solvents and toys are also products that come into close human contact. Anything that includes glycerin, linoleic acid, oleic acid, steric acid, tallow, meat or bone meal makes products of plant origin.
Meat packing companies benefit from producing edible rendering as a sideline. However, this area is not well regulated, nor has any consistency been established. You can’t be sure how your fat product was processed or its source.
With the high volume of meat consumption in today’s world, the rendering plant industry is mandatory to solve the animal remains problem. Without this recycling of slaughterhouse waste, we would be threatened with uncontrolled viral and bacterial epidemics. Rendering has been a craft carried on for centuries in kitchens and shops for making candles, soap, ghee (ghee), and lard. It has become a multibillion-dollar global industry.
As long as animals are consumed, rendering plants are needed. Most environmentally concerned citizens believe that costly programs and unmanageable regulations get the attention rather than cleaning up the industry to produce safe products.
Raising awareness of the quality of animal feeds, the resulting threat they pose to the animals we ultimately eat and the pets we love should be enough to bring social demands for quality regulation according to many people.
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