Animal Rendering: Economics and Policy

CRS Report for Congress
Animal Rendering: Economics and Policy
Geoffrey S. Becker
Specialist in Agricultural Policy
Resources, Science, and Industry Division
Summary
Renderers convert dead animals and animal byproducts into ingredients for a wide
range of industrial and consumer goods, such as animal feed, soaps, candles,
pharmaceuticals, and personal care products. U.S. regulatory actions to bolster
safeguards against bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease) could
portend significant changes in renderers’ business practices, the value of their products,
and, consequently, the balance sheets of animal producers and processors. Also, if
animal byproducts have fewer market outlets, questions arise about how to dispose of
them safely. This report, which will not be updated, describes the industry and discusses
several industry-related issues that have arisen in the 108^th Congress.¹
Introduction
Renderers convert dead animals and animal parts that otherwise would require
disposal into a variety of materials, including edible and inedible tallow and lard and²
proteins such as meat and bone meal (MBM). These materials in turn are exported or
sold to domestic manufacturers of a wide range of industrial and consumer goods such
as livestock feed and pet food, soaps, pharmaceuticals, lubricants, plastics, personal care
products, and even crayons (also see Table 1 on page 6).
Although rendering provides an essential service to the increasingly intensive and
cost-competitive U.S. animal and meat industries (and is subject to certain government
food safety and environmental regulations), the industry has largely operated outside of
public view. However, rendering has attracted greater public attention since the discovery

¹ For periodic updates on issues affecting the industry, see CRS Issue Brief IB10127, Mad Cow
Disease: Agricultural Issues for Congress.
² Among other sources for this report are Sparks Companies Inc., The Rendering Industry:
Economic Impact of Future Feeding Regulations, June 2001, and Livestock Mortalities: Methods
of Disposal and Their Costs, March 2002, both prepared for the National Renderers Association
(NRA); Don A. Franco and Winfield Swanson, eds., The Originial Recyclers, 1996, published
by the Animal Protein Producers Industry, the Fats & Proteins Research Foundation, and NRA;
and February 2004 interviews with officials of NRA and the American Meat Institute (AMI).
Congressional Research Service ˜ The Library of Congress

of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease) in two North American
cows in 2003. U.S. officials have announced or are considering new regulatory actions
intended to reassure foreign and domestic customers that BSE will not threaten food
safety or U.S. cattle herds. These actions are likely to cause changes in renderers’
business practices, costs, and product values. Any changes in the economics of rendering
likely will affect the economics of animal and meat producers too.
Industry Overview
Renderers annually convert 47 billion pounds or more of raw animal materials into
approximately 18 billion pounds of products. Sources for these materials include meat
slaughtering and processing plants (the primary one); dead animals from farms, ranches,
feedlots, marketing barns, animal shelters, and other facilities; and fats, grease, and other
food waste from restaurants and stores.
In meat animal slaughtering and processing plants, the amount of usable material
from each animal depends largely upon the species. For example, at slaughter, a 1,200-
pound steer can yield anywhere from 55% to 60% of human edible product, including
meat for retail sale, edible fat, and variety meats (organs, tongue, tail, etc.), according to
various estimates. Subtracting another 5%-8% for the weight of the hide, which goes into
leather, leaves 32%-40% of material for rendering. If this range were applied consistently
to all 35.5 million U.S. cattle slaughtered in 2003, the equivalent would represent the
weight of approximately 11 million to 14 million live cattle.³
Elsewhere, independent renderers collect and process about half of all livestock and
poultry that die from diseases or accidents before reaching slaughter plants (Sparks 2002).
U.S. farm animal mortalities in 2000 included approximately 4.1 million cattle and calves
(totaling 1.9 billion pounds); 18 million hogs (1 billion pounds); 833,000 sheep, lambs,
and goats (64 million pounds); and 82 million chickens and turkeys (347 million pounds),
according to Sparks, which examined USDA data.
“Disposing of these mortalities is complicated because of the need to minimize
adverse environmental consequences, such as the spread of human and animal disease or
the pollution of ground or surface water,” Sparks (2002) observed. “For many producers,
paying a modest fee to have a renderer remove dead carcasses is likely preferred to
finding alternative on-farm disposal methods” (i.e., burial, incineration, or composting).
Number and Types of Rendering Plants. One study estimated that 137 firms
operated 240 plants in 1997, with a total payroll of nearly 10,000 employees.⁴ More
recently, the National Renderers Association (NRA) estimated that Canada and the United
States have a combined 250-260 rendering plants. Rendering facilities may be either
integrated or independent operations.

³ Yield estimates vary, however. For example, the World Health Organization (WHO) has
estimated that half of every cow and a third of every pig is not consumed by humans. WHO,
Understanding the BSE Threat, October 2002.
⁴ PL 107-9 Federal Inter-agency Working Group, Animal Disease Risk Assessment, Prevention,
and Control Act of 2001(PL 107-9), Final Report, January 2003, Appendix 6.

Integrated plants operate in conjunction with animal slaughter and meat processing
plants and handle 65%-70% of all rendered material. The estimated 95 U.S. and
Canadian facilities (NRA) render most edible animal byproducts (i.e., fatty animal tissue),
mainly into edible fats (tallow and lard) for human consumption. Edible rendering is
subject to the inspection and safety standards of USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection
Service (FSIS) or its state counterparts, which by law already are present in the meat
slaughter and processing plants. These plants also render inedible byproducts (including
slaughter floor waste) into fats and proteins for animal feeds and for other ingredients.
Because a meat plant typically processes only one animal species (such as cattle, hogs, or
poultry), its associated rendering operations likewise handle only the byproducts of that
species. The inedible and edible rendering processes are segregated.
Independent operations handle the other 30%-35% of rendered material. These
plants (estimated by NRA at 165 in the United States and Canada) usually collect material
from other sites using specially designed trucks. They pick up and process fat and bone
trimmings, inedible meat scraps, blood, feathers, and dead animals from meat and poultry
slaughterhouses and processors (usually smaller ones without their own rendering
operations), farms, ranches, feedlots, animal shelters, restaurants, butchers, and markets.
As a result, the majority of independents are likely to be handling “mixed species.”
Almost all of the resulting ingredients are destined for nonhuman consumption (e.g.,
animal feeds, industrial products). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
regulates animal feed ingredients, but its continuous presence in rendering plants, or in
feed mills that buy rendered ingredients, is not a legal requirement.
The Rendering Process. In most systems, raw materials are ground to a uniform
size and placed in continuous cookers or in batch cookers, which evaporate moisture and
free fat from protein and bone. A series of conveyers, presses, and a centrifuge continue
the process of separating fat from solids. The finished fat (e.g., tallow, lard, yellow
grease) goes into separate tanks, and the solid protein (e.g., MBM, bone meal, poultry
meal) is pressed into cake for processing into feed.⁵ Other rendering systems are used,
including those that recover protein solids from slaughterhouse blood or that process used
restaurant grease. This restaurant grease generally is recovered (often in 55-gallon drums)
for use as yellow grease in non-human food products like animal feeds.
Value and Use of Rendered Products. The 18 billion pounds of ingredients
that renderers produce each year have been valued at more than $3 billion, of which $870
million is exported. Of the 18 billion pound total, 10 billion pounds were feed ingredients
with a value of approximately $1 billion (Sparks 2001). MBM accounted for 6.6 billion
pounds of this, poultry byproducts 4 billion pounds, and blood meal 226 million pounds
(Sparks).⁶ Such ingredients are valued for their nutrients — high protein content,
digestible amino acids, and minerals — and their relatively low cost. Poultry operations
and pet food manufacturers accounted for 66% of the domestic MBM market of nearly

5.7 billion pounds in 2000, while hog and cattle operations took most of the rest.

⁵ A more detailed description and flowchart is on the NRA website, [http://www.renderers.org/].
⁶ Sparks 2001. However, MBM as a proportion of total animal feed consumed is relatively low,
at less than 1% each for ruminants and swine, about 2% for poultry, and 7% for pet food, Sparks
said. Seventy percent of all blood meal has gone for ruminants, mainly dairy. (Otherwise,
federal rules prohibit the feeding of most mammalian proteins back to ruminants.)

Policy Discussion
So long as animals are raised and processed for food, vast amounts of inedible
materials will be generated, the result of premature deaths, herd culls, and slaughter
byproducts. “Regardless of quantity, byproducts and rendered products from the slaughter
process must be sold at whatever price will clear the market or the industry (and the
environment) incurs a cost for disposal.”⁷ As government rules and industry practices
evolve to address food safety and animal disease concerns like BSE, options for using
these byproducts may become more limited. If animal byproducts have fewer market
outlets, new questions may arise about how to dispose of them safely and who should pay.
“Feed Ban” Impacts. Scientists currently maintain that infected animal feed is
the primary source of BSE transmission (although research continues into other potential
sources). Therefore, U.S. officials believe that regulation of feed ingredients is the single
most effective method for controlling BSE. Following the widespread outbreaks of BSE
in Great Britain and Europe, the FDA in August 1997 imposed a ban on feeding most
mammalian proteins to cattle and other ruminants. Prohibited proteins still can be fed to
other animals such as pigs, poultry and pets. (FDA in late January 2004 announced plans
to expand the list of prohibited proteins.)
Estimates vary on the economic impact of the feed ban. According to a 1997 report
prepared for the FDA on compliance costs and market impacts, the FDA feed ban could
reduce MBM values by between $63 million and $252 million, or $25 to $100 per ton.⁸
Sparks (June 2001) estimated that the average MBM value loss since the 1997 rule was
$18 per ton, for a total of $288 million during the period 1996 to 2000. Sparks added that
these losses likely were highly concentrated among renderers that produce MBM
exclusively, and among those handling mixed species. The FDA-commissioned report
predicted that renderers would pass much of the lost value to packers by paying less for
raw materials; packers in turn were expected to reduce their payments for cattle.
The 2001 Sparks study examined potential cost impacts of several options for more
extensive feed restrictions. It estimated that a total animal protein feed ban to ruminants
would cost $100 million yearly; a total ban on all ruminant proteins to all farm animals,
$636 million yearly; and a total animal protein ban to all farm animals, $1.5 billion yearly.
Downers and Dead Animals. Another recent regulatory action with an impact
on the rendering industry was USDA’s December 30, 2003, ban on all “downer”
(nonambulatory) cattle from the human food supply. U.S. officials consider downers, or
animals unable to rise or walk, to be one of the higher-risk cattle groups for BSE
(although industry officials note that most animals become nonambulatory from injuries
or non-BSE diseases). Before the ban, USDA estimated that 150,000-200,000 downers
were entering slaughter plants. One issue is whether the downer ban has removed an
economic incentive to market downers and thus made it more difficult for USDA to
obtain such animals for BSE (and other disease) surveillance.

⁷ PL 107-9 Federal Inter-agency Working Group, Animal Disease Risk Assessment, Prevention,
and Control Act of 2001 (PL 107-9), Final Report, January 2003.
⁸ Eastern Research Group, Cost Analysis of Regulatory Options to Reduce the Risk of an
Outbreak of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies in the United States, Addendum to the
Final Report, April 30, 1997.

On March 15, 2004, USDA announced a major expansion of its BSE surveillance
program that will sample many more downers and dead animals, adding that it is looking
to renderers (among other sites) to make these animals available. Numerous practical
problems — such as how to recover and store carcasses, who will sample, the costs, etc.
— now confront both government and industry officials.⁹
Disposal Questions. If renderers earn less money from rendered byproducts and
dead animals, they will pay less for such materials. In the past, renderers paid for dead¹⁰
animals. Now most charge a fee to pick them up. In its 2002 study on the cost of
livestock mortalities, Sparks assumed that so long as MBM could be sold for feed, the
average per-head cost of disposing of dead cattle and calves might be $8.25 per head; if
MBM is banned from animal feed, the cost could rise to $24.11 per head. Sparks
estimated the per-head costs for other disposal methods at $9.33 for incineration, $10.63
for burial, and $30.34 for composting.
The 2002 World Health Organization (WHO) report observed that rendering,
because it “sanitizes” animal wastes, “performs an essential public service: the
environmental clean-up of wastes too hazardous for disposal in conventional ways. For
example, animal wastes provide ideal conditions for the growth of pathogens that infect
humans as well as animals. Incineration would cause major air pollution. Landfill could¹¹
lead to disease transmission.”
A USDA advisory committee in February 2004 said that along with an enhanced
BSE surveillance program, “a comprehensive system must be implemented to facilitate
adequate pathways for dead and non-ambulatory cattle to allow for collection of samples,
and for proper, safe disposal of carcasses; this must be done to ensure protection of public
health, animal health, and the environment; such a system will require expending federal
resources to assist with costs for sampling, transport and safe disposal.”¹²
Others temper this view of rendering by observing that the nation’s clean air and
water laws are in place to address possible adverse environmental impacts. These
responsibilities are enforced under the purview of the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) and generally through states and localities, which often impose their own
environmental and health standards as well. While rendering (which also must abide by
such standards) certainly is one option for handling dead stock and animal byproducts, it
has been argued, this option does not relieve the animal and meat industries of their
environmental responsibilities. Because these industries created this material, they should
bear the costs, not the public, particularly at a time when budget deficits are forcing
difficult spending choices, the argument goes.

⁹ About 75-85 rendering plants currently accept nonambulatory livestock, Tom Cook, NRA
president, said in early 2004. About 85-90 plants could handle dead animals, he also has said.
Information on the BSE surveillance plan is available through USDA at: [http://www.usda.gov/].
¹⁰ Tom Cook, NRA President, personal communication, January 19, 2004.
¹¹ Understanding the BSE Threat, p. 7. WHO also notes that BSE is “the notable exception” to
rendering’s ability to kill most infectious agents.
¹² Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Foreign Animal and Poultry Diseases, Measures Relating
to Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy in the United States, February 13, 2004.

Table 1. U.S. Production, Consumption, and Export
of Rendered Products, 1999-2003(p)

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 (p)

^PRODUCT^ION⁽ⁱⁿ^th^o^u^san^d^m^e^tr^{ic to}ⁿ^s⁾
^In^edi^b^l^e^t^a^l^l^o^w^&^g^r^eas^es^3,209.5³^,242.9³^,116.2²^,927.1²^,826.4
^Edi^b^l^e^t^a^l^l^o^w^784.4^834.8^836.9^894.3^890.1
^L^a^rd^243.1^234.9^182.9^118.6^113.2
^Meat^m^eal^&^t^aⁿ^k^a^g^e^2,748.2²^,612.4²^,508.7²^,256.3²^,482.9
^F^eat^h^e^{r m}^eal^379.2^367.6^353.6^357.2^354.1
^A^{ll o}^t^h^e^rⁱⁿ^ed^ib^le^a^1,148.2¹^,235.4¹^,257.7¹^,911.6¹^,386.7
^T^o^t^a^l^Produ^ctⁱ^oⁿ⁸^,518.6⁸^,^534.1⁸^,262.0⁸^,471.1⁸^,478.9
^DOM^E^ST^{IC CONSUM}^PT^ION
^bb^b
^S^o^ap^104.0^67.1
^In^edi^b^l^e^t^a^l^l^o^w^f^o^{r f}^eed^435.5^412.0^424.4^400.2^549.2
^G^r^eas^es^f^o^{r f}^eed^812.2^837.9^859.6^648.2^622.8
^bb^b
^L^u^bri^can^t^s^45.6^46.5
^bb
^F^a^t^t^y^aci^ds^262.1^265.0^262.0
^Edi^b^l^e^t^a^l^l^o^w^(edi^bl^e/ⁱⁿ^edi^b^l^e^u^s^es⁾^194.4^206.9^241.7^232.3^200.8
^L^a^{rd (edi}^bl^e/ⁱⁿ^edi^b^l^e^u^s^es⁾^176.2^156.0^136.0^136.2^122.7
^Meat^m^eal^&^t^aⁿ^k^a^g^e^;^f^eat^h^e^{r m}^eal^3,873.1³^,755.7³^,626.4³^,920.6²^,276.5
^T^o^t^a^l^D^o^m^e^s^tⁱ^c^C^oⁿ^s^u^m^ptⁱ^oⁿ⁵^,934.5⁵^,779.6⁵^,664.3⁵^,707.6⁴^,068.7
^EX^P^O^R^T^S
^In^edi^b^l^e^t^a^l^l^o^w^875.8^789.4^605.4^792.3^713.1
^Y^e^l^l^o^w^g^r^eas^e^183.4^182.6^184.3^287.8^259.0
^O^t^h^e^{r i}ⁿ^edi^b^l^e^f^a^t^s^&^oi^l^s^247.6^229.7^190.3^206.7^223.9
^Edi^b^l^e^t^a^l^l^o^w^143.8^110.8^165.3^232.0^204.2
^L^a^rd^66.9^78.9^46.9^38.2^53.6
^Meat^&^bon^{e m}^eal^381.5^434.9^451.6^565.5^520.3
^F^eat^h^e^{r m}^eal^21.0^24.9^42.0^39.0^40.2
^Bon^e^&^bon^{e produ}^ct^s^26.4^35.1^36.9^23.8^25.6
^T^o^t^a^l^Ex^port^s^1,946.5¹^,886.2¹^,722.7²^,184.5²^,039.9
^So^urce^:^N^R^A^;^{2003 dat}^a^prelⁱ^mⁱⁿ^ary^(p).
^{a. In}^cl^u^d^es^pou^l^t^r^y^f^a^t^an^{d by}^-^p^rodu^ct^m^eal^an^{d raw}^produ^ct^s^f^o^{r pet}^f^ood.
^{b. Wi}^t^h^h^e^l^d^t^o^av^oi^{d di}^s^c^l^o^sⁱⁿ^gⁱⁿ^di^vⁱ^du^al^fⁱ^rm^dat^a^.