There are nearly 50 billion pounds of raw material by-products produced annually in North America as a direct result of producing livestock and poultry for food. Their historic utilization, existing for over a century, as processed by the rendering industry and used by the feed industry has been ancillary to animal production. The nutritional references and research documents supporting the contributions and benefits to animal nutrition are extremely extensive.
Historically, improvements have been constant in nutritional and microbiological quality parameters. Their contributions are currently being evaluated by some using criteria that are not as easily defined as is their amino acid bioavailable content, metabolizable energy, or grams of available phosphorus ? criteria which are devoid of and defy the development of scientific parameters. It thus becomes difficult to reference implications for their future.
The alternatives for not utilizing rendered animal by-products are not available. Perhaps there are future options. But in today’s environment, the realities limit alternatives to their utilization or conversely finding disposal means for nearly half of all animal production. The later cannot be supported scientifically, environmentally, economically, biosecurally (human or animal health), or ecologically.
Animal by-products that have been processed into protein-rich ingredients and energy-dense fats have been a staple in livestock and poultry rations for well over a century. Their origin as co-products of a primary industry (animal slaughter) has dictated their utilization as a valuable resource or conversely accept the consequences of their disposal. Thus, the use of animal proteins and fat back into rations has been an inherent segment of sustainable agriculture. Their use has been guided and supported by a research framework of academia and industry representation providing science to address nutritional, biosecurity, and quality improvements.
The historical appreciation for the benefits to world health and economics has been measured in billions of dollars annually. The ancillary services provided by the rendering process has been a virtual unrecognized asset. It has been only recently that “today’s consumer” has expressed greater concerns for virtually everything associated with food that not only addresses food safety, but also management practices associated with its production and processing as well as both its nutrient and non-nutrient content. The most difficult stories to write are those that predict the future. However, the future of animal by-products as feed ingredients will probably be influenced more by factors other than their established nutrient contributions.
Perception
The faculty of intuitive judgment exerts strong influences on our beliefs and actions. Perceptions are personal but generally acquired through past experiences, lack of knowledge, or influence from others. Actual experience or a direct relationship with animal production is becoming rare. The numbers associated with agriculture in general continues to be on a linear decline. As a result, the media and the influence of others are primary in the establishment of current animal production perceptions. Certainly the perceptions established during the 16-year period following the advent of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly referred to as “mad cow disease,” drastically altered the perceptions of food safety.
Even though BSE has been confined to a relatively small segment of the world, repercussions have been felt globally. It must now be recognized that an incident anywhere becomes an incident everywhere. The repeated vivid scenes of the Holstein cow staggering and falling in barnyard wastes on our nightly news are strong perception developers. Then followed by the basic descriptive cause for the epidemic being “feeding ground up cow to cows” are extremely strong re-enforcers. Further reference to an implied cross transmission of an untreatable neurodegenerative disease in humans (Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease) makes perceptions essentially facts.
The fact that 99.9 percent of all BSE cases have occurred in the United Kingdom (UK), or directly linked to animal or product movement from the UK, is of minor detail. The fact that BSE has not been identified in North America despite extensive surveillance programs, with the exception of a UK import in Canada several years ago, have provided little resolve in the fear, perceptions, and “facts.” The constant affirmation that the multilayered system of safeguards for protecting against the introduction of BSE in North American countries and any amplification should a diagnosis occur has been negated by the media web of fear. Users of animal protein ingredients responding to this atmosphere of heightened uncertainty have themselves started to harbor doubts about the safety of products that have been traditional supplements in feed rations for more than 100 years.
Regulatory Activities
The rendering and feed industries of North America continue to be challenged by the continuing emerging requirements of proposed directives emanating from the European Commission (EC). The challenge to a new disease in which very little is still known regarding cause and epidemiology for the science defying and complex nature of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE) is appreciated. However, the decade and a half of “rapid response policies” by the EC has addressed political emotions more effectively than either science or risk assessment. This fact, coupled with the abuse in complying with directives, has resulted in less than successful, effective policies that have been sourced from the European Union.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) established a surveillance program in 1986, import restrictions were initiated in 1989, and rules prohibiting the use of certain mammalian animal proteins in feed for cattle and other ruminant animals (Title 21 CFR 589.2000) were initiated in 1997. Canada has developed similar actions. However, the continued emerging policies, directives, and proposed regulations have a significant influence on global trade and policies.
The current U.S. and Canadian rules directed at restricted use protein products has affected handling and usage of all animal protein products by the feed industry. If understood and implemented, the requirements are little different from those that addressed past issues such as used for medications and antimicrobials. Certification programs have emerged as supplemental assurance for the proper use of restricted protein ingredients. It is paramount that the suppliers, the feed industry, and the producer all understand that if protein ingredients cannot be verified to be 100 percent from non-ruminant material, it is prohibited from use in feeds for cattle and other ruminant animals.
The FDA feed ban includes requirements that finished product sales be kept and made available for inspection by FDA inspectors. This provides FDA mechanisms to both verify the source of raw materials and verify compliance to the feed ban among feed manufacturers, dealers, distributors, and end users. For renderers who process proteins exempted under the regulations, safeguard procedures to prevent cross-contamination must be in writing and verified in practice.
There are no scientific reasons that animal protein ingredients are not safe feed ingredients for livestock, poultry, companion animal, and aquaculture rations. There will, however, be constant challenges to their continued use as well as regulatory activities for additional restrictions and prohibitions.
Many of these initiatives will be sourced from influences outside the boundaries of North America. Both industry and government support for policies demanding only those accompanied with validated scientific review will dictate the future – a future that either will result in by-products being utilized as resourceful ingredients or the need for our society to face a tremendous disposal problem.
International Trade Manipulations
The world today is truly nothing more than a “global village.” The “village,” however, continues to be comprised of a diversity of demography. Thus, visions of how to protect human and animal health within specific boundaries vary.
Regionalized precedents have been a historical fact. The “trade wars” can site many previous examples (i.e., hormone, antibiotic, and most recently genetically modified organisms). The BSE issue and its unparalleled characteristics of causation, lengthy incubation period, the uncertainty of its epidemiological implications, high level of political awareness, but low level of validated science, precipitates outlets for trade sanction violations. Thus the future of animal by-products and even meat products will be impacted by the fickle manipulation to gain import or export advantages.
Anti-animal Activists
There is a growing segment of the world’s population that possess rightist beliefs that precludes the use of animals or their products from food or fiber usage. This belief is also possessed by an increasing number of vegetarians.
The Vegetarianism Resource Group, a non-profit based group in Maryland that publishes the Vegetarian Journal, reports that between three and nine percent of the U.S. population are vegetarian. The North American Vegetarian Society estimates that 10 million Americans, or four percent of the U.S. population, consider themselves vegetarian, but two-thirds sometimes eat meat and more than 95 percent use dairy or poultry products.
It is difficult to define statistics due to the differences in definition and interpretation of vegetarian. There is no single “vegetarian diet.” Eating habits vary widely as do reasons for becoming vegetarian such as perceived health benefits, religious reasons, and concern for animal rights. The trend is increasing among teens and those without knowledge of animal production. Teenage Research Limited in Illinois found 35 percent of girls and 18 percent of boys with opinions that vegetarianism is a fashionable trait.
The movement away from animal derived products is a need for all animal agribusiness to address. The right of diet selection must remain an individual’s preference. However, the true nutritional facts, potential risks, and hazards associated with eating disorders must be made available so that decisions can be made pragmatically rather than ideologically or emotionally. The same pragmatic evaluation process is indicated for animal by-products as well.
The rendering process completely decharacterizes muscle, fat, and other animal tissues into a protein rich granular-type substrate and fats with specific nutritional components that has absolutely no resemblance to the original raw material. Processed meats similarly transform into enticing products that make up nearly 29 percent of all deli sales, which is now a $25 billion market for supermarkets. The deli is the fastest growing department in the supermarket and sliced meats are the leaders. The growth of poultry consumption has been unprecedented. In spite of foot and mouth disease in the UK, the continued attention on BSE, and the “slow down” of the U.S. economy, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association has reported a second quarter increase in beef demand of five percent when compared to the previous year.
Currently, animal protein has retained its status in both the food and feed marketplace in North America. The “anti” forces have objectives, however, that are directed at altering that status.
“No Animal Proteins”
The advent of marketing programs that promote “no rendered animal by-products used,” “no animal protein,” and other natural/organic food claims, though opportunistic, are not founded on science based decisions. Nor have the alternatives been fully evaluated concerning environmental, biosecurity – both human and animal, economic, or ecological impacts of not utilizing animal by-product ingredients. Unfortunately, marketing schemes have appeared in nearly every animal food class that infers a negative connotation to the use of animal derived products. Decisions generally not made by the scientific staff within companies and most often without consultation with the scientific community.
The American Association of Feed Control Officials 2000 Ingredient Manual identifies 125 individual animal by-product ingredients, thus most claims alleging that their exclusion from the production process are false. The decision-making process for such initiatives are profit and market driven. Inputs for decisions made by retail executives, politicians, and regulators look first to accountants, pollsters, and headlines for their decision-making clues. Microbiologists, epidemiologists, toxicologists, and nutritionists are generally not the first source in which advice is gathered. Long term, the image that is portrayed by these initiatives will have an impact on the use of animal proteins, animal agri-industries, and the ecology.
Animal production and its edible components have historically been focused to the delivery of wholesome, safe, readily available, and economical products for human diets. Their importance and demand increase with increasing affluence. Ancillary to the production of meat and animal products is the fact that nearly 50 billion pounds of raw by-products are also produced. At a maximum, 57 percent of the live weight of cattle, 53 percent of swine, and 67 percent of poultry is processed as food. The remaining bone, viscera, skin, fat, and other trim tissues must be utilized or discarded. The traditional utilization has been via rendering these tissues into valuable fat and protein ingredients. Rendering is a biosecure process, which evaporates water and extracts fat that results in approximately a 25 percent fat and 25 percent protein yield from the raw material.
Other alternatives to rendering exist such as burial, burning, incineration, landfilling, composting, or extruding. All, when compared to rendering, are very unacceptable either due to human and animal health, environmental, ecological, or economic challenges. Therefore the question needs to be asked – what are the “no animal by-product” advocates proposing to do with the 50 billion annual pounds of ancillary production? If placed in landfills, it has been established that over one-fourth of all the current U.S. landfill space would be required. Further, if loaded on trucks, the annual quantity would occupy all lanes, entrances, and exits on U.S. Interstate 80 extending from its origin in New Jersey to San Francisco to be occupied. This illustration is offered only to serve as a reminder to all of the animal industries sector that current alternatives to rendering and the utilization of rendered animal by-products as feed ingredients simply are not currently available.
Perhaps there are future options, but in today’s environment, the production realities are a dependent relationship between utilizing the by-products and sustaining animal production.
The Future
Predicting the future is a tenuous task. So it is for the future of animal production and the utilization of their by-products. There are numerous forces reminding us daily of the nutritional and ethical rancor derived from animal consumption. Certainly those forces would prefer that tofu, soymilk, and vegeburgers comprise the sources for our nutrient requirements.
The future extends forever and as Yogi has said, “It just isn’t what it used to be.” But despite all of the negatives, my crystal ball forecasts a strong future for animal protein derived products for both human and animal consumption.
Those in the animal agribusiness industries must collaborate and cooperate into a strong coalition that sets aside short-term personal interests and beliefs for the primary goal of assuring a sustainable animal agriculture. History is much easier to analyze than the future is to predict. Historically, agriculture in general has not illustrated those cooperative traits. Thus more support for seeking utilizations or alternatives for the “whole animal” must become more evident than recently displayed.
Tech Topics - December 2001 Render