Rendering (food processing)

Rendering is a process that converts waste animal tissue into stable, value-added materials. Rendering can refer to any processing of animal products into more useful materials, or, more narrowly, to the rendering of whole animal fatty tissue into purified fats like lard or tallow. Rendering can be carried out on an industrial, farm, or kitchen scale.

The majority of tissue processed comes from slaughterhouses, but also includes restaurant grease and butcher shop trimmings and expired meat from grocery stores. Euthanized pets, about 6-8 million dogs and cats, euthanized catch of animal control and roadkill also processed at rendering plants. No animal is too ravaged by disease or too putrid to be rendered. This material can include the fatty tissue, bones, and offal, as well as entire carcasses of animals condemned at slaughterhouses, and those that have died on farms, in transit, etc. The most common animal sources are beef, pork, sheep, and poultry.

The rendering process simultaneously dries the material and separates the fat from the bone and protein. A rendering process yields a fat commodity (yellow grease, choice white grease, bleachable fancy tallow, etc.) and a protein meal (meat and bone meal, poultry byproduct meal, etc.).

Rendering plants often also handle other materials, such as slaughterhouse blood, feathers and hair, but do so using processes distinct from true rendering.

The occupation of renderer has appeared in "dirtiest jobs" listicles.

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Wikipedia