by Albert A. Midoux, USDA FSIS, retired
Have you had your protein today?
In order to understand the impact of a commercial rendering facility on health, food safety and the environment, one must know its purpose which I will do my best to clarify. Today, rendering plants are often referred to as protein plants in an attempt to disguise and somewhat glamorize their morbid but necessary service, which is to dispose of by means of cooking and dehydrating, all remains and/or parts of food animals and fowl which are by-products of today’s meat and poultry processing plants. This would include entrails and their contents, blood, bones and feathers and spoiled product and would also include the entire carcass of any animal or fowl which was condemned for disease or other abnormality.
Rendering plants do not discriminate, they will accept for cooking and dehydrating practically anything of animal origin that is not breathing, at least not noticeably, this could include anything bovine or equine, lapin or swine, canine or feline. All types of fowl, fish and road kill. Cause of demise or condition at arrival is no obvious concern and can arrive fresh or in advance stages of rot. Years ago such factories were usually located as far away from populated areas and our food supply as possible. The stench of decaying flesh, entrails and blood and the steam which rose from the cooking operation would literally gag a maggot. Unfortunately maggots are not deterred by gagging. The magical ability of these disgusting little creatures to reproduce must have increased the weight of the finished product to a noticeable degree. Years ago, the vehicles hauling this cargo were called dead wagons and became popular as man began to replace the natural order of scavengers. Today the 18 wheelers have replaced the dead wagons but carry the same cargo, only in much greater volume and from much greater distance. They continue to leak blood and fluids laden with disease and bacteria along our highways, and on steep grades blood and critter parts at times will flow over the tail gate.
About now you are wondering what in blazes all this has to do with health, food safety and the environment. You don’t eat it! You don’t drink it! And you sure as hell don’t swim in it!
Today the destination of the dead wagon convoy is no longer the remote and isolated areas of years past and no longer distant from our edible food supply. Their cargo will be delivered to meat and poultry processing plants which have the resources to handle the huge amount of waste waters from both a food processing operation and a rendering plant. The resources needed of course is one of our streams in which to dump waste waters, such streams are little more than a free sewage disposal for industry at the expense of the rightful owners, you and me.
As with all harebrained ideas, it came about slowly and did not appear to be the dangerous monster it was destined to become. Years ago, meat and poultry processing plants asked for and were given permission to operate their own little rendering operations. This would be limited to the cooking and dehydrating of the waste from their own processing operations. This meant also that it would be rendered as it was produced, meaning fresh. As the processing plants grew, so grew the surrounding population. Most plants were on municipal sewage systems. Poultry slaughtering plants seemed to spring up in smaller towns than did beef and pork plants. These plants which had developed rendering facilities, in-plant or on premise, soon discovered waste water treatment systems unable to handle the added sewage load of the rendering phase of their operations, much less future expansion of such an operation.
Other processing plants located in more suitable areas (meaning a nearby stream to use as a sewage conduit) and already operating on-premise rendering, asked for and received permission from USDA to alleviate the suffering of those less fortunate (no stream) and that they did! Commercial rendering was born, and the monster grew.
Today only a few plants do the rendering of many. In the southeast area of Missouri alone, thousands of tons of this vile and, in most cases, decaying cargo is trucked in on a weekly basis from hundreds of miles in any direction, unregulated and unrefrigerated. The immense size of these operations created major problems almost immediately, such as the piling of decaying matter on the receiving aprons awaiting the process. Flies and crickets blackened the walls of the facility. Steam from the cooking process and organic dust from the drying phase of the rendering operations permeated the entire food processing area and settled as moisture and dust are prone to do, on everything and anything including packaging material and products destined for your kitchen. RTC, ready to cook, so to speak.
On one particular occasion, rendering dust had accumulated on the roof of a premise rendering facility, warm and humid conditions created the perfect breeding ground for fly larva (maggots). Maintenance men complained to me that the maggots were falling on them from the roof as they entered and left the facility. Maintenance people worked on and repaired equipment in both edible and inedible departments—being only a few feet apart, it was a very short walk. The putrid stench of a commercial rendering operation is disgusting and often overwhelming for many miles depending on the whim of the wind. No term can accurately describe the aroma of airborne molecules of bacteria laden filth of cooked carrion.
In some establishments were I have worked, plant management would become quite agitated if inspectors (USDA) complained of conditions in or about their rendering facilities. To correct the problems management was forced to request, respectfully, of course, that the USDA declare rendering facilities as off-premise operations, the request was granted and on-premise became officially off premise and off-limits to official scrutiny of nosy inspectors.
There are two streams in this area of southwest Missouri that receive the waste water from two such operations. Millions of gallons of effluent pour daily into these streams from over burdened lagoons. These were once beautiful full body contact streams flowing clear, clean and containing abundant and diverse aquatic life. Today they are nutrient loaded and are choked with algae growth and bacteria runs rampant—for example, fecal coliform colonies of 400,000 were recorded in the smaller of the two streams and well into the thousands in the much larger river. This is only my opinion, but it seems that our state health officials believe that exposure to the above is good for the immune systems.
One should know that the finished product of rendering is used mostly for feeding back to our food animals including flocks of laying hens used for commercial egg production. This should be a great deterrent to egg sucking. Feeding our food critters back to our food critters is economically induced cannibalism.
If ever there existed a mega-manufacturing corporation designed for the manufacture and distribution of food related illness, it is the commercial rendering plant operating within crawling distance of facilities processing poultry or meat for human consumption.
The decisions by our agencies which allowed such a deplorable practice as I have described were based on total ignorance of the facts as well as the consequence. I chose ignorance just to be nice, it was not my first choice.
Hopefully I have given you something to think about. I have certainly given the subject a great deal of thought, especially around dinner time. You know, I have always believed that “you are what you eat” which probably explains my bald head, tooth loss and red neck. The next buzzard you see, wave, he might just wave back.