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Ignorance may be bliss, but here is another example of how
we are slowly, but steadily, killing ourselves!
Article is entitled, "The Dark Side of Recycling,"
from the Fall, 1990, Earth Island Journal.
"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 bandanna-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 hammermill 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 Renderers Association. The magazine states
that ‘...unless US and Canadian renderers 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 euthanised 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 petrochemically 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 petrochemically poisoning our food
has become a reality."
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Now, here are some other interesting things:
--A 1991 USDA report states that "approximately 7.9 billion
pounds of meat and bone meal, blood meal and feather meal [were]
produced in 1983." Of that amount, 34 percent was used in
pet food, 34 percent in poultry feed, 20 percent in pig food and
ten percent in beef and dairy cattle feed. Scientific American
cites a dramatic rise in the use of animal protein in commercial
dairy feed since 1987.
--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 butterballs. 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, hog manure and human sewage sludge as possible foods
for the animals, ALL eaten by human beings. . .
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Rendering
plants and the Food YOU eat!
