Introduction/Background
Rendering, in its broadest dimension, has been an activity closely linked to the history of mankind. In theory, it is nothing more than a cooking and drying process that yields both edible and inedible fats of varying grades and animal and poultry protein meals. The changes in the industry over the years are a definite reflection of both agricultural and societal transformation and progress. The early processes of fat melting and subsequent candle and soap manufacturing, although contributing to the genesis of the industry of yesteryear, are no longer the sustaining force of today’s industry.
In the United States, livestock and poultry agriculture has historically been big business. This is affirmed by the current average annual slaughter and processing of 100 million hogs, 35 million cattle, and approximately eight billion chickens. This bountiful capacity contributes to the nation’s wholesome meat and poultry supply and is dependent on an integrated linkage from the farm to the slaughterhouse to the table. This interrelatedness between farm and slaughterhouse in livestock production and processing introduces the world of the rendering industry’s pertinence to environmental health, production, and sustainable agriculture.
Environmental Health and Production
Environmental health is a broad and diverse discipline, at times ill defined, but continues nonetheless to be an important public health concern that is associated with the quality of our ecological balance and the use of four essentials for life – water, food, land, and air in human activities. Changes produced during this use of these essentials could influence comfort, health, esthetic senses, efficiency, and the capacity of people to realize a social adjustment that is satisfactory.
Most people are unaware of the relationship between the rendering industry, the livestock industry, the environment, and public health. The renderers of our country pick up approximately 100 million pounds of otherwise residual material each day, some or all of which could collect and decay in our environment. Without the recycling/processing services of renderers, massive problems of disposal from slaughterhouses, and other food processors, restaurants, and institutions, would result in serious challenges to disease transmission, prevention, and control, and obviously environmental and public health.
As a result, the contributions of the rendering industry today to the overall effort to maintain a clean and healthy environment can be considered monumental. The immensity of the attribution of the role of the rendering industry can be amplified by a readily understood example; leave a small piece of any uncooked meat in a warm room for a couple of days and you get an appreciation for the pertinence of the industry.
Thrift G. Hanks, in a literature survey summarizing the pertinence of solid wastes/disease relationships, described both the dilemma and an analogy: “The literature fails to supply data which would permit a quantitative estimate of any solid waste/disease relationship. The circumstantial and epidemiologic information presented does support a conclusion that, to some diseases, solid wastes bear a definite, if not well defined, etiologic relationship. The diseases so implicated are infectious in nature; no relationship can be substantiated for noncommunicable disease agents associated with solid wastes, not because of negating data, but because of lack of data.”
The rendering industry today is also a heavy investor in odor control and modern water and air pollution equipment in cooperation with regulatory agencies to provide safeguards to environmental health. The ultimate result is a direct benefit to the community and the continuing contribution of renderers to sustainable agriculture, animal nutrition and health, environmental and public health, and proper utilization of natural resources. In retrospect, an industry that is integrated into every facet of the broad realm of agriculture that ultimately influences in many ways, the lives of so many from every conceivable perspective.
Inedible by-products (portions of live cattle, pigs, sheep, poultry, and fish that are not used for human food) from the livestock, poultry, and fish processing industries provide the starting materials for many useful products, contributing to the economic and environmental benefits of rendering over a century ago. Prior to 1900, the use of inedible by-products, except hides, was limited to fertilizing crops.
This trend changed dramatically by the research findings in 1901 of Professor C.S. Plumb and associates of Purdue University who demonstrated unusual growth rates in pigs that were fed animal proteins (digester tankage) to supplement corn rations. Other researchers of the period, stimulated by Plumb’s initial success, began to investigate the potential attributes of other rendered products, including the addition of dried blood to tankage in varying “mixes” to rations. This combination resulted in further improvement in growth gains and served as early scientific validation for using rendered animal by-products in animal nutrition, thus helping in the expansion of the marketing for all rendered products as valuable nutritional supplements.
Today’s production of approximately 18 billion pounds annually of finished rendered products provides a perspective of the continuing growth of the rendering industry and its integrative role in a dynamic and productive agricultural system.
The assurance of quality in processing/rendering takes place through incorporating good manufacturing practices, Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, or International Organization of Standards. These procedures ensure that rendered products meet the basic elements of sanitation and hygiene that are essential for feed safety.
Sustainable Agriculture
Many terms defy definition and sustainable agriculture has become one of them. In a rapidly changing world, can anything really be sustainable? The question ought to be what do we want to sustain since it is such a nebulous goal. If nothing else, the term has provided talking points to provide a sense of direction, innovative thinking, and excitement. As it pertains to agriculture, sustainable describes farming systems that are “capable of maintaining their productivity and usefulness to society indefinitely.” By design, the systems must be resource-conserving and environmentally sound, and by applicability fits the rendering industry perfectly.
Sustainable agriculture should be a harmonized objective of all countries. The planned integration to promote and assure sustainability involves all sectors of agriculture, from the maintenance of pastures and grazing lands, protection of the watershed, husbandry and nutrition, sanitation and hygiene on-farm, disease control in plants and animals, slaughter and processing that assures food safety, to the need for proper disposal of residuals that can be processed into usable, high valued products.
Solid waste disposal has become an integral part of the agricultural/environmental matrix, obeying the exponential law of the P factor – people, products, power, pollutants, and places – all associated with growth and concentration. The discard of all levels of our consumption has outstripped the capacity of all our standard traditional methods of disposal. The options are limited to burn it, bury it, or transform it for reuse. This transformation for reuse is the major attribution of the rendering industry.
The pertinence of the concept of a sustainable agriculture to the rendering industry is best exemplified by the full utilization of food residuals unfit for human consumption that can be further processed and “recycled” back into the livestock agriculture chain. In retrospect, this function demonstrates one of the most unique resources in animal agriculture – processing of the end products of the animal food chain into valuable feed ingredients for inclusion back into livestock rations.
In essence, the rendering industry is a prime example of resource utilization and a major contributor to the principles/concepts of sustainable agriculture.
Summary
The rendering industry has been an integral part of American agriculture from the founding of the republic. It makes the most efficient use of nonrenewable resources and enhances environmental quality and biological cycles and controls. The industry converts annually over 50 billion pounds of inedible by-products from meat and poultry processing into usable commodities, predominantly as highly valued protein supplements for livestock, poultry, and pet foods and tallow for the manufacture of fatty acids and as a source of energy in feed rations.
The industry provides direct benefits to farmers, slaughterhouses, and the feed manufacturing industry and serves as an active intermediary in the broad realm of environmental health, production, and a support mechanism for sustainable agriculture by assisting the economic viability of farm operations and the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole.
The linkage of the rendering industry as a supplier of feed ingredients mandates an important role for the industry in the broad objectives of food safety from farm to table, and in this process contributes to safe feed that will generate healthy livestock to produce safe food, and ultimately healthy people.
Tech Topics - June 2001 Render