As long as humans continue consuming animal protein obtained through massive factory farming operations, there will always be a staggering volume of waste left behind. Granted, farm animal excrement and urine are now being recycled in some highly resourceful and head-scratching ways (body care products and refreshing beverages, anyone?) but…well…the type of waste I’m actually focusing on is what remains once the meat industry slaughters and processes their livestock.
Not exactly a pleasant topic, but rendering plants came into being so that animal byproducts could be “recycled” and transformed into useful items that could yield some sort of economic value. They were also devised as a way of preventing potential diseases (resulting from ever-accumulating decomposing carcasses and bacterial transmission) from harming the public at large. In a way, we should all be thankful that this apparently earth friendly business came into being because it’s a necessary evil, but the term “rendering” is actually a neat and tidy euphemism for something that the majority of us rarely ever consider, let alone know much about. If we did, perhaps we wouldn’t be as enthusiastic about reaching for a burger.
Death is not something that we like to focus on for too long, and the meat industry has mastered the art of removing the consumer from the nasty reality of how a hot dog or piece of fried chicken actually materializes on our plates. Behind the closed doors of massive factory-like rendering operations, “raw product” or what remains once the choice human-grade bits are carved away (as well as endless piles of dead animal parts and full bodies, restaurant grease, expired grocery store meat, municipal-collected road kill, laboratory animals, animal shelter/zoo/veterinarian carcasses that have been euthanized or have died of natural causes, downer animals, bones, spinal cords, blood, heads, hooves, tails, feathers, stomachs, intestines, and even butcher shop remnants) is finely shredded, cooked for an extended period of time, and ultimately processed in two different ways, depending on whether it will be used for edible or inedible applications.
In the U.S. alone, 100 million pounds of animal-based material is dropped off every day at these highly specific facilities and processed 24 hours a day. Unfortunately, it’s not a “precise business” given the fact that in addition to the tissue being rendered, additional ingredients are inadvertently cooked down in the mix, including plastic components like cattle ID tags, supermarket Styrofoam trays from expired meats, veterinarian disposal body bags & pet collars as well as heavy metals from pet ID tags, needles, pins and insecticide-saturated flea collars. The products that end up being created with recycled rendered animal parts include biodiesel, cosmetics, candles, soap, edible tallow, lard, commercial pet food, livestock food (which is all too frequently fed to creatures that are meant to be herbivores rather than carnivores), fertilizers, and even human grade food such as potted meat food products made by Hormel, Libby’s and Armour Star containing mechanically separated meat. I’ve always embraced recycling in its many incarnations, but after learning about what goes down in rendering plants, my enthusiasm for repurposing body parts is has gone way way south, along with my appetite for meat.
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