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Rendering - That politically correct recycling term for killing

• "The city of Los Angeles sends 200 tons of euthanized cats and dogs to West Coast Rendering plant every month. This is just from the city's animal shelters and does not include animals from private veterinarians." -- Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D

Rendering is the process by which raw materials (dead animals and animal byproducts) are converted into a long list of ingredients for industrial and consumer goods.

Sources for raw materials include

• meat slaughtering and processing plants

• ranches

• factory farms

• feedlots

• animal shelters

• veterinary clinics

• restaurants

• research laboratories

• road kill

• pest control companies

These materials in turn are exported or sold to domestic manufactures of a wide range of industrial and consumer goods including

• livestock feed

• pet food and treats

• soaps

• pharmaceuticals

• lubricants

• plastics

• shampoo

• lotion

• rubber

• candy

• lard

• candles

The National Renderers Association estimated that there are 250-260 rendering plants in North America alone. The 18 billion pounds of ingredients that renderers produce each year have been valued at more than $3 billion of which $870 million is exported.

The Rendering Process
Raw materials (meat byproducts and dead animals) are ground and placed in cookers, which evaporate moisture and free fat from protein and bone.

A series of conveyers, presses and a centrifuge continue the process of separating fats from solids. The finished fat (tallow, lard, yellow grease) goes into separate tanks, and the solid protein (meat and bone meal, poultry meal) is pressed into cake for processing into feed.

Rendering and Pet Over Population
Rendering is not only the result of the farm animal and restaurant industries; it is clearly the consequence of the companion animal overpopulation crisis. Millions of dogs and cats are euthanized in shelters across the county each year. In cities across the North America healthy companion animals are being euthanized and “disposed of” in rendering facilities. These dogs and cats not only endure a lonely shelter life but also suffer the horrible indignity of being rendered.

So long as animals are raised for food and unwanted companion animals exist rendering will continue.

You Can Help

• Go Vegan - stop supporting the rendering industry by cutting out animal products.

• Spay and neuter your pets.

• Adopt from a shelter, never buy from a pet store.

• Never buy from a breeder; 20-25% of shelter animals are purebreds.

• Support mandatory spay-neuter laws and differential-licensing laws (which increase license fees for animals that have not been fixed).

• Educate family and friends about the rendering industry and problems of pet overpopulation.

Source: Animal Rendering: Economics and Policy, Geoffrey Becker, CRS Report for Congress 2004.

More information and resources:

• Rendered Products in Pet Food (pdf file)
   

• "Now it must be very evident that the dairy cows are no longer vegetarian animals.  The dairy industry feeds them recycled meat products, which is derived by recycling slaughterhouses waste and other dead animals such as millions of euthanized cats and dogs from veterinarians and animal shelters.  Hence the milk produced by cows contains non-vegetarian elements."
  Source: Recycling of Dead Animals and Slaugherhouse Wastes
   

• "The most environmentally conscious state in the nation is California, where spot checks and testing of animal-feed ingredients happen at the wobbly rate of once every two-and-a-half months. The supervising state agency is the Department of Agriculture's Feed and Fertilizer Division of Compliance. Its main objective is to test for truth in labeling: 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.  In California, eight field inspectors regulate a rendering industry that feeds the animals that the state's 30 million people eat. When it comes to rendering plants, however, state and federal agencies have maintained a hands-off policy, allowing the industry to become largely self-regulating. An article in the February 1990 issue of Render, the industry's national magazine, suggests that the self-regulation of certain contamination problems is not working."
  Source: The Dark Side of Recycling - Rendering Plants
   

• "Rendering plants take in a wide variety of source materials that include parts such as brains, eyeballs, spinal cords, intestines, bones, feathers or hooves as well as restaurant grease, supermarket rejects such as spoiled steak, road kill and in some areas euthanized cats and dogs from veterinarians and animal shelters.  Such source materials are processed at the rendering plant into ingredients used in a number of products that many people do not associate with animals. Such products include soap, toothpaste, mouthwash, hair dyes, nail polish, photographic film, crayons, glue, solvents, shoe polish, toys, anti-freeze, ornaments, pharmaceutical products and cosmetics (including those not tested on animals)."
  Source: Animal Rendering Products In More Places Than You Think
   

• "A few years ago, Baltimore reporter Van Smith visited a rendering plant in his city and found that the large vats that collect and filter the animals prior to cooking contained a vast array of animals including dead dogs, cats, raccoons, opossums, deer, foxes, snakes, a baby circus elephant and the remains of a police department horse. This one rendering plant alone processes 1,824 dead animals every month. Every year this one plant turns 150 million pounds of decaying, diseased and drug filled flesh and kitchen grease into 80 million pounds of meat and bone meal, tallow and yellow grease. This nutritionally dead, often toxic material provides the base for most pet foods and is found in a vast array of products used by humans as well."
  Source: Killing Our Pets With Every Meal

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