Rendering is the process of turning dead animal parts into useable products. Rendering facilities cook and press animal matter to separate fats from solids. The resulting materials — tallow and meat and bone meal — become ingredients in everything from animal feed to explosives.
Other legal methods of disposal in Washington include burial and incineration. But only rendering puts almost every part of the animal to use.
According to the Whatcom County Code, the preferred method of dead-animal disposal is
rendering, said Bill Angel, the Whatcom County Health Department’s environmental health specialist. In Whatcom County, this is because rendering has been around a long time, and it is a good recycling opportunity, he said.
Because of public reaction, renderers rarely advertise their services. Dick Hinthorne, the general manager for Baker Commodities Inc., a rendering company with a collection facility in Whatcom County, said few people are familiar with animal life cycles and processing. The general public has a sanitized vision of agriculture, he said. Although widespread in the United States and abroad, rendering is known as “the silent industry,” avoiding public scrutiny.
“People are disconnected from agriculture,” said Dennis Luckey, Baker Commodities’ executive vice president. “They think products just magically appear in the supermarket; they are very removed
from the process.”
In November 2004 the United States commercially slaughtered more than 11.5 million cows and pigs,
according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The leftover entrails, bones, skin and hooves serve as the raw materials in the rendering process.
Whatcom County is home to approximately 112,417 cattle, including about one-fourth of
Washington’s dairy herd, according to the 2002 Census of Agriculture.
Linsey Hoekstra, the owner of Tri-County Dead Stock Removal, makes his living transporting the animal carcasses these dairy and livestock herds generate. Using a Ford L8000 truck and a hydraulic winch to load his deceased cargo, Hoekstra delivers to Baker Commodities’ Ferndale station five days
a week.
“It’s usually dairy cows who’ve gone down, but I get horses and calves, too,” Hoekstra said.
Butcher shops also produce material for renderers. Rick Biesheuvel, the co-owner of Lynden Meat Co., said roughly 40 percent of a butchered cow is packaged for consumption. The other 60 percent, including hooves, skin, bones and entrails, becomes material for rendering. Renderers collect grease from restaurants, as well. The grease and byproducts of the beef and dairy industry supply the bulk of renderers’ raw material — but not all of it.
Penny Cistaro, the executive director of the Whatcom Humane Society, said the society’s Animal Control and Rescue squad picks up stray dead animals and road kill and takes them to the county animal shelter. Baker Commodities collects these animals along with the shelter’s euthanized cats and dogs.
At Baker Commodities’ Ferndale station, employees salvage hides for leather production before fleets of covered trucks transfer the remaining animal matter and restaurant grease down Interstate 5 to Baker Commodities’ Seattle processing plant.
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“A rendering plant has existed at this location since 1936,” assistant area manager Ben Cameron said.
On a Monday morning, Cameron had to shout above the noise of routine facility maintenance. Two 60-foot blue silos at the front of the plant hold processed meal, he said. To the left, in a large ventilation structure, air-scrubbers wash vapor with chlorinated water. A thermal oxidizer burns additional odors at 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit, he said. With a hose, Cameron sprayed a chlorinated, mint-smelling foam that also reduced odor.
“You don’t adjust to the smell,” he said. “You learn to breathe around it.”
Trucks from the transfer stations unload their cargo into raw-material pits, each capable of holding 25 tons. The process starts with an initial grind-up. Then a 68-foot screw, 20 inches in width, transfers material over a magnet to remove stray metals, such as old barbed wire and other stray metals cows might have eaten. After more grinding, the material goes into a “finishing hoger” for final breakdown.
Baker Commodities uses a steam “continuous processing” method to process large amounts of animal byproduct, Cameron said. Used restaurant cooking grease fuels water boilers for the steam cooker. From a touch-screen computer, Cameron can monitor the cooker’s heat and processing speeds. Rotating screws enclosed in pipes transfer the material between the different steps in the rendering process, so the material is seldom visible or handled by human employees.
Water, which comprises half of all raw material, evaporates during cooking. A cooking shaft, the length of a bus and 6 feet in diameter, draws raw material through one end and pushes baked material out the other. Pressing separates the grease, or tallow, before further refinement. The resulting “cakes” of meat and bone meal are reground, dried and shaken to remove hair. Processed solids resemble dirt the consistency of corn meal.
“We try to recover everything,” Hinthorne said. “Our objective is not to have to send anything
to the dump.”
Renderers throughout the country process 36 billion pounds of inedible animal byproduct a year, according to the National Renderers Association Inc. The solid and fats that result from rendering become ingredients for a variety of products. Paint, lubricant, shampoo, tires, explosives and ink contain ingredients derived from tallow. The solids — meat and bone meal — are important ingredients in livestock feed, poultry feed and pet food.
Baker Commodities sells tallow and meat and bone meal in bulk quantities to markets in Asia, Luckey said. Baker Commodities exports almost 100 percent of its products from the Northwest region.
Rendering’s status as “the silent industry” changed in 2003 when authorities found a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad-cow disease, in Washington, attracting media attention.
Baker Commodities’ Spokane processing plant rendered the infected animal, Hinthorne said. By the time the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service identified the diseased animal, 13 days had passed, and the cow had been processed. Hinthorne said careful documentation allowed Baker Commodities to identify the cow as Canadian in origin and isolate infected material.
“We knew exactly which animal it was, where it came from and where the contaminated material had been shipped to,” Hinthorne said.
In reaction to this case, APHIS began an enhanced mad-cow disease surveillance program. Now, testing occurs at slaughterhouse’s on-site rendering plants and collection facilities. Of more than 175,000 cows tested in 2004, zero tested positive for the disease, according to the APHIS Web site.
In 1997, The Food and Drug Administration prohibited
ruminant animals, such as cows, sheep and goats, from being processed into feed for other ruminants. In response to the Washington case, the FDA is considering stricter feed laws to prevent the spread of mad-cow disease. Proposed regulations would prohibit specific animal material from entering meat meal and bone meal that other animals eat. Luckey said this move would make rendering those materials economically unfeasible.
“We have to let science play out,” Hinthorne said, referring to APHIS testing. “The tests will be done in November, and we are waiting for the FDA’s rulings then.”
Regardless of restrictions, the rendering industry will continue to operate, Luckey said. More un-rendered material, however, will probably end up in landfills if the feed ban tightens, he added.
In 2004, world meat production was 253.6 million tons, and this increases every year, according to the Department of Food and Agriculture Administration of the United Nations. Renderers play an integral part in processing the waste this production generates. Having already lasted years in silence, renderers plan on outlasting current health issues in the public’s view.
“We are not a glamorous industry,” Luckey said, “but we provide a valuable service to society
and the environment.”