Visit to a rendering plant
The following is a description
of a "rendering" plant. WARNING: very graphic
You may not be familiar with
the idea of rendering plants. The dead animal and discarded flesh disposal
industry. Yet rendering represents a multi-billion dollar business, and
these facilities operate 24 hours a day just about everywhere in America,
and they've been in operation for years.
Here is an article entitled
“The Dark Side of Recycling” from the Fall, 1990, Earth Island Journal
to learn about rendering plants:
“The rendering plant floor
is piled high with ’raw product’: thousands of dead dogs and cats; heads
and hooves from cattle, sheep, pigs and horses; whole skunks; rats and
raccoons --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.
“Two bandana-masked men begin
operating Bobcat mini-dozers, loading the ‘raw’ into a 10-foot-deep stainless
steel pit. They are undocumented workers from Mexico, doing a dirty job.
A giant auger grinder at the bottom of the pit begins to turn. Popping
bones and squeezing flesh are sounds from a nightmare you will never forget.
“Rendering is the process
of cooking raw animal material to remove the moisture and fat. The rendering
plant works like a giant kitchen. The cooker, or ‘chef,’ blends the raw
product in order to maintain a certain ratio between the carcasses of pets,
livestock, poultry waste and supermarket rejects.
“Once the mass is cut into
small pieces, it is transported to another auger for fine shredding. It
is then cooked at 280 degrees for one hour. The continuous batch cooking
process goes on non-stop 24 hours a day, seven days a week as meat is melted
away from bones in the hot 'soup.’ During this cooking process, the soup
produces a fat of yellow grease or tallow that rises to the top and is
skimmed off. The cooked meat and bone are sent to a hammer mill press,
which squeezes out the remaining moisture and pulverizes the product into
a gritty powder. Shaker screens sift out excess hair and large bone chips.
Once the batch is finished, all that is left is yellow grease, meal and
bone meal.
“As the American Journal
of Veterinary Research explains, this recycled meat and bone meal is used
as ‘a source of protein and other nutrients in the diets of poultry and
swine and in pet foods, with lesser amounts used in the feed of cattle
and sheep. Animal fat is also used in animal feeds as an energy source.’
Every day, hundreds of rendering plants across the United States truck
millions of tons of this ‘food enhancer’ to poultry ranches, cattle feed-lots,
dairy and hog farms, fish feed plants and pet food manufacturers where
it is mixed with other ingredients to feed the billions of animals that
meat eating humans, in turn, will eat.
“Rendering plants have different
specialties. The labeling designation of a particular ‘run’ of product
is defined by the predominance of a specific animal. Some product label
names are: meat meal, meat by-products, poultry meal, poultry by-products,
fish meal, fish oil, yellow grease, tallow, beef fat and chicken fat.
“Rendering plants perform
one of the most valuable functions on Earth: they recycle used animals.
Without rendering, our cities would run the risk of becoming filled with
diseased and rotting carcasses. Fatal viruses and bacteria would spread
uncontrolled through the population.
“Death is the number one
commodity in a business where the demand for feed ingredients far exceeds
the supply of raw product. But this elaborate system of food production
through waste management has evolved into a recycling nightmare. Rendering
plants are unavoidably processing toxic waste.
“The dead animals (the ‘raw’)
are accompanied by a whole menu of unwanted ingredients. Pesticides enter
the rendering process via poisoned livestock, and fish oil laced with bootleg
DDT and other organophosphates that have accumulated in the bodies of West
Coast mackerel and tuna.
“Because animals are frequently
shoved into the pit with flea collars still attached organophosphate-containing
insecticides get into the mix as well. The insecticide Dursban arrives
in the form of cattle insecticide patches. Pharmaceuticals leak from antibiotics
in livestock, and euthanasia drugs given to pets are also included. Heavy
metals accumulate from a variety of sources: pet ID tags, surgical pins
and needles.
“Even plastic winds up going
into the pit. Unsold supermarket meats, chicken and fish arrive in Styrofoam
trays and shrink wrap. No one has time for the tedious chore of unwrapping
thousands of rejected meat packs. More plastic is added to the pits with
the arrival of cattle ID tags, plastic insecticide patches and the green
plastic bags containing pets from veterinarians.
“Skyrocketing labor costs
are one of the economic factors forcing the corporate flesh peddlers to
cheat. It is far too costly for plant personnel to cut off flea collars
or unwrap spoiled T-bone steaks. Every week, millions of packages of plastic
wrapped meat go through the rendering process and become one of the unwanted
ingredients in animal feed.
“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.
“One policing program that
is already off to a shaky start is the Salmonella Education/Reduction Program,
formed under the auspices of the National Renders Association. The magazine
states that ‘...unless US and Canadian renders get their heads out of the
ground and demonstrate that they are serious about reducing the incidence
of salmonella contamination in their animal protein meals, they are going
to be faced with new and overly stringent government regulations.’
“So far, the voluntary self
testing program is not working. According to the magazine, ‘...only about
20 per cent of the total number of companies producing or blending animal
protein meal have signed up for the program...’ Far fewer have done the
actual testing.
“The American Journal of
Veterinary Research conducted an investigation into the persistence of
sodium Phenobarbital in the carcasses of euphonized animals at a typical
rendering plant in 1985 and found ‘... virtually no degradation of the
drug occurred during this conventional rendering process...’ and that ‘...the
potential of other chemical contaminants (e.g., heavy metals, pesticides
and environmental toxicants, which may cause massive herd mortalities)
to degrade during conventional rendering needs further evaluation.’
“Renderers are the silent
partners in our food chain. But worried insiders are beginning to talk,
and one word that continues to come up in conversation is ‘pesticides.’
The possibility of petrochemicals poisoning our food has become a reality.
Government agencies and the industry itself are allowing toxins to be inadvertently
recycled from the streets and supermarket shelves into the food chain.
As we break into a new decade of increasingly complex pollution problems,
we must rethink our place in the environment. No longer hunters, we are
becoming the victims of our technologically altered food chain.
“The possibility of petrochemicals
poisoning our food has become a reality.”
That article is one of the
most disgusting things we have ever read.
Meat consumption leaves an
acidic residue and a diet of acid forming foods requires the body to balance
its pH by withdrawing calcium from the bones and teeth. So even if we consume
enough calcium, a high protein, meat based diet will cause calcium to be
leached from our bodies.
As children we were taught
to eat from the "Four Food Groups". This was merely a marketing concoction
by the joint efforts of the Meat and Dairy Associations (which are VERY
BIG business) to sell their products.
According to John Stauber
and Sheldon Rampton’s article, “The US ‘Mad Cow’ Cover-Up.” Stauber and
Sheldon write, “For seven years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA),
the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the multi-billion dollar animal
livestock industry have cooperated in a PR cover-up of huge health
risks to U.S. animals and people.
“For ten years preceding
the outbreak of Mad Cow Disease in Britain, the USDA had scientific evidence
that a version of the disease existed in U.S. cattle. Yet government and
industry have failed, even at this late date, to ban the practice of ‘cow
cannibalism.’
“The practice, prohibited
in Britain for years, continues throughout the U.S. It is, in fact, more
widespread in the U.S. than in any other country. And, as USDA researcher
Dr. Mark Robinson points out, ‘the rendering processes employed in the
UK and the US are virtually the same.’ The USDA confirms that, for decades,
scrapie-infected sheep have passed through U.S. rendering plants.’
“After a decade of official
denials, the British government finally admitted that Mad Cow Disease --
responsible for the deaths of more than 160,000 British cattle -- appeared
to have migrated into humans who ate contaminated beef and are now dying
of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD).
“The British government's
acknowledgment that infected beef was the likely cause of death for ten
unusually young CJD victims came as grim vindication to Dr. Richard Lacey,
a leading British microbiologist whose increasingly desperate warnings
that the BSE threat was ‘more serious than AIDS’ have been officially dismissed
for the past six years.
“Dr. Lacey predicts that
the government's failure to act sooner, combined with the disease's long
latency period, could produce 5,000-500,000 human deaths per year in Britain
sometime after the year 2000.
“Internal documents and PR
plans obtained by PR Watch, via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) investigation,
show that the U.S. government has sought to protect the economic interests
of the powerful meat and animal feed industries, while denying the existence
of risks to animals and human.
“In a 1991 internal PR document,
the USDA advised officials to use the technical name for the disease. ‘The
term “Mad Cow Disease” has been detrimental,’ the document explained. ‘We
should emphasize the need to use the term “bovine spongiform encephalopathy”
or “BSE.”’
“Mad Cow Disease apparently
became an epidemic in England as a result of ‘rendering plants’ -- factories
that melt carcasses and waste meat products into protein used in animal
feeds, cosmetics, nutritional supplements, medicines, and other products.
As little as one teaspoon of feed derived from infected cattle can transmit
the disease to another cow.
“In the U.S., plants process
billions of pounds of protein from dead cows, sheep, pigs, chickens and
other animals into animal feed each year.
“In 1990, the USDA and FDA
convened a committee dominated by the cattle, dairy, sheep, and rendering
industries. They launched a ‘voluntary ban’ on feeding rendered cows to
cows. This was simply a PR maneuver. A similar voluntary ban failed miserably
in Britain. The feeding of ruminant protein to cows continues at a rate
of millions of pounds per day.
“U.S. government and industry
representatives still insist that Mad Cow Disease does not exist in the
U.S. Unfortunately, this party line is based on wishful thinking, rather
than scientific proof.
“A major U.S. outbreak seems
plausible, even likely, unless the U.S. government acts swiftly to outlaw
the practice of feeding rendered by-product protein to cows.
“Has a meat borne form of
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease already spread into the U.S. human population?
Despite denials from the federal government, a number of statistically
alarming clusters of CJD already have been reported in the U.S.
“In the past, victims of
CJD have been misdiagnosed with Alzheimer’s -- a disease afflicting some
four million Americans. The beginnings of a CJD epidemic could, therefore,
already be hidden within the country's huge population of dementia patients.”
As usual, though, in this
country, the bottom line boils down to money and not the public good. In
another USDA internal document from 1991, entitled “BSE Rendering
Policy,” we read: “There is speculation... that a spongiform encephalopathy
agent is present in the U.S. cattle population.” The report concluded that
“prohibit[ing] the feeding of sheep and cattle origin protein products
to all ruminants... minimizes the risk of BSE. The disadvantage is that
the cost to the livestock and rendering industries would be substantial.”
In Michael Greger’s groundbreaking
article, “The Public Health Implications of Mad Cow Disease,” we learn:
“With scientists like Marsh saying, ‘The exact same thing could happen
over here as happened in Britain,’ and with beef consumption already at
a thirty-year low, the USDA is justifiably worried. There was even a complaint
filed with the FDA concerning a woman with CJD who had been taking a dietary
supplement containing bovine tissue. Like England, we have been feeding
dead cows to living cows for decades. In fact, here in the U.S. a minimum
of 14% of the remains of rendered cattle is fed to other cows (another
50% goes on the pig and chicken menu). In 1989 alone, almost 800 million
pounds of processed animal were fed to beef and dairy cattle. Partly because
of this, the USDA has conceded that ‘the potential risk of amplification
of the BSE agent is much greater in the United States’ than in Britain.
“... Four million Americans
are affected by Alzheimer's; it is the fourth leading cause of death among
the elderly in the U.S. Epidemiological evidence suggests that people eating
meat more than four times a week for a prolonged period have a three times
higher chance of suffering a dementia than long-time vegetarians. A preliminary
1989 study at the University of Pennsylvania showed that over 5% of patients
diagnosed with Alzheimer's were actually dying from a human spongiform
encephalopathy. That means that as many as 200,000 people in the United
States may already be dying from mad cow disease each year.”
The cattle that so many folks
eat every day not only fatten on the flesh of their fellows, but they also
feed on the manure of other species. Feast your eyes on this information
from the U.S. News and World Report: “Chicken manure in particular, which
costs from $15 to $45 a ton in comparison with up to $125 a ton for alfalfa,
is increasingly used as feed by cattle farmers despite possible health
risks to consumers... more and more farmers are turning to chicken manure
as a cheaper alternative to grains and hay.”
The same story quotes farmer
Lamar Carter, who feeds to his 800 head of cattle a witches’ brew of soybean
bran and chicken manure: “My cows are as fat as butter balls. If I didn't
have chicken litter, I’d have to sell half my herd. Other feed's too expensive.”
Farmer Carter doesn't mention
this, but reporters Satchell and Hedges do: “Chicken manure often contains
campylobacter and salmonella bacteria, which can cause disease in humans,
as well as intestinal parasites, veterinary drug residues, and toxic heavy
metals such as arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury. These bacteria and
toxins are passed on to the cattle and can be cycled to humans who eat
beef contaminated by feces during slaughter.”
If they're not being fed
on rendered by-products or chicken manure, according to the Satchell and
Hedges article, “Animal feed manufacturers and farmers also have begun
using or trying out dehydrated food garbage, fats emptied from restaurant
fryers and grease traps, cement kiln dust, even newsprint and cardboard
that are derived from plant cellulose. Researchers in addition have experimented
with cattle and hog manure, and human sewage sludge. New feed additives
are being introduced so fast, says Daniel McChesney, head of animal feed
safety for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, that the government cannot
keep pace with new regulations to cover them.”
Cattle and hog manure and
human sewage sludge as possible foods for the animals eaten by human beings.
Words fail me.
Some articles reprinted from
Chet Day's Online #6. |
