The Rendering Industry

For 165 years, the North American rendering industry has empowered society to follow this wise advice. With little fanfare, the industry has been a major force in ensuring a clean and healthy environment - recycling the things we don't want to eat, such as bones, grease or hides, into usable, valuable products for consumers long before the word "recycling" popped into the press. From its roots in creating tallow for soaps and candles, and hides for leather, the North American rendering industry has responded to the changes in society - in what we eat, how we clean ourselves and our homes, what we feed our pets, what we use to build and beautify our environments.

Every year the North American rendering industry recycles some 50 billion pounds of discarded animal material from the livestock and poultry farming and processing, food processing, supermarket and restaurant industries. Without renderers, consider where this material would end up - and at what cost to public health, the environment and taxpayers. Instead, using high-tech controls that run high-temperature cookers, centrifuges and presses, renderers turn this material into valuable ingredients - high-quality fats and proteins.

Other industries rely on these high-quality fats and proteins for products that are important to people today - including soaps, paints, varnishes, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, crayons, leather, textiles, lubricants, rubber products, plastics, agricultural fertilizers and explosives. Farmers rely on the ingredients for meat and poultry production. In fact, the rendering industry returns the majority of its finished products to the feed industry.

Renderers produce high-energy fats and high-quality protein ingredients that supplement animal diets as guided by government regulations. These ingredients lead to more efficient production of beef, veal, pork, poultry, eggs and milk. Pets also benefit from the nutrient-rich and flavorful ingredients for pet food.

The economic impact of the rendering industry is significant, and the manufacture and trade in rendered products is critical to North America's agricultural economy and balance of trade. During 2004, the value of rendered products in the United States alone approximated $2.7 billion. About 15% of the tonnage was exported. The top 5 export markets in 2004 were Mexico, Turkey, Indonesia, China, Canada, and Venezuela. In That year, approximately 88% of exports were animal fats and greases and 12% were animal protein meals.

For communities, this recycling of perishable by-products significantly reduces their solid waste and the cost to manage it. The rendering plants also contribute to local tax bases, supporting local services and infrastructures.

The modern rendering plant is a high-tech, low-touch system far removed from the early days when workers were more exposed to the raw material and used simple boiling and separation, or "wet rendering." Today plants use dry rendering, a process that releases fat by dehydrating raw material in a batch or continuous cooker. This cooking and drying process yields fat of varying grades and also protein meals for animals and poultry. It eliminates the direct contact of raw material with added water and live steam, thus avoiding the possibility of contaminated wastewater from the processing.