Recycling of Slaughterhouses Waste (Rendering Plants)

 

Recycled Process:

The rendering plant floor is piled high with 'raw product' all waiting to be processed. In the 90-degree heat, the piles of dead animals seem to have a life of their own as millions of maggots swarm over the carcasses.

First the raw material is cut into small pieces and then transported to another auger for fine shredding. It is then cooked at 280 degrees for one hour. This process melts the meat away from bones in the hot 'soup.' This continuous batch cooking process goes on non-stop for 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

During this cooking process, the soup produces fat of yellow grease or tallow (animal fat) that rises to the top and is skimmed off. The cooked meat and bone are sent to a hammermill press, which squeezes out the remaining moisture and pulverizes the product into a gritty powder. Shaker screens remove excess hair and large bone chips. Now the following three products are produced:

·    Recycled meat

·    Yellow grease (animal fat)

·    Bone meal

Since these foods are exclusively use to feed animals, most state agency spot check and test for truth in labeling such as; does the percentage of protein, phosphorous and calcium match the rendering plant's claims; do the percentages meet state requirements? However, testing for pesticides and other toxins in animal feeds is incomplete or not done.

Recycled Products and Usage:

Every day, hundreds of rendering plants across the United States truck millions of tons of this 'food enhancer' to dairy industry, poultry ranches, cattle feed-lots, hog farms, fish-feed plants, and pet-food manufacturers. This food enhancer is mixed with other ingredients to feed the billions of animals.

Rendering plants have different specialties. Some product-label names are: meat meal, meat by-products, poultry meal, poultry by-products, fishmeal, fish oil, yellow grease, tallow, beef fat, and chicken fat.

A 1991 USDA report states that rendering plants produced approximately 7.9 billion pounds of meat, bone meal, blood meal, and feather meal in 1983. Of that amount:

·    34 percent was used in pet food

·    34 percent in poultry feed

·    20 percent in pig food

·    Rest (12 percent) in dairy and beef cattle feed

Scientific American cites a dramatic rise in the use of animal protein in commercial dairy feed since 1987.

At least 250 rendering plants operate in the United States and modern rendering plants are large and centralized, and the industry's revenues amount to $2.4 billion a year, said Bruce Blanton, executive director of the National Renderers Association in Alexandria, Va.

Scientists believe the so-called mad cow disease results when cattle eat feed made from the brains or spinal cords of sheep suffering from scrapie. They believe the people who died were infected when they ate beef, or dairy or other products from these cows, a theory that remains controversial, though evidence is accumulating.

The Story of North Carolina - USA

In an article entitled "Greene County Animal Mortality Collection Ramp", states that:

"With North Carolina ranking in the top seven states in the U.S. in the production of turkeys, hogs, broilers and layers, it has been recently estimated that over 85,000 tons of farm poultry and swine mortality must be disposed of annually".

To meet this disposal need, in 1989 the Green County Livestock Producers Association began using an animal carcass collection site. Livestock producers bring the dead animal and bird carcasses to the ramp and drop them into a water-tight truck with separate compartments for poultry and other livestock parked behind the retaining wall.

A local farmer, contracted by the Livestock Association, hauls the animal and bird mortality to the rendering plant each day and maintains the collection site. The rendering plant pays the Livestock Association each week based on the current prices of meat, bone, feather meal, and fat.

During the first 16 weeks of operation in 1989, over 1 million pounds or a weekly average of 65,000 pounds of dead animals and birds (mortality) were collected and sent to the rendering plant.

The end result of this very successful project is that Greene County livestock and poultry producers have a convenient, safe, and economical alternative to dispose of animal and bird mortality.