Rendering

is the grotesque and disrespectful way we continue to exploit animals, 
objectify them and commodify them even in death

A rendering plant renders dead animals carted in by farmers, veterinarians and roadkill crews.

It's not a topic that most people think about, but consider this: One dairy cow weighs 1,500 pounds, and chicken farms house millions of birds. When they die, they have to go somewhere.

Rendering plants take all kinds of dead animals, slaughterhouse and meat-packing castoffs, and restaurant oils and grease. They reduce these materials into oils, fats and proteins used in cosmetics, paints, pet food and livestock feed.(source)

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, expired meat from grocery stores, and the carcasses of euthanized and dead animals from animal shelters, zoos and veterinarians. 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 rendering process varies from plant to plant in many ways.

1. Whether the end products are to be used as human food is based on the type of raw material and the processing methods.
2. Whether the end products are to be used as animal or pet food.
3. The material may be processed wet or dry. In wet processing, either boiling water or steam is added to the material, causing fat to rise to the surface; in dry processing, fat is released by dehydrating the raw material.
4. The temperature range used, whether high or low.
5. Processing may be either in discrete batches or in a continuous process.
6. The processing plant may be operated by an independent company that collects the material on the open market, or by the packing plant that produced the material.

Rendering processes for edible products

Edible rendering processes are basically meat processing operations and produce lard or edible tallow for use in food products. Edible rendering is generally carried out in a continuous process at low temperature (less than the boiling point of water). The process usually consists of finely chopping the edible fat materials (generally fat trimmings from meat cuts), heating them with or without added steam, and then carrying out two or more stages of centrifugal separation. The first stage separates the liquid water and fat mixture from the solids. The second stage further separates the fat from the water. The solids may be used in food products, pet foods, etc., depending on the original materials. The separated fat may be used in food products, or if in surplus, it may be diverted to soap making operations. Most edible rendering is done by meat packing or processing companies.

One edible product is greaves, which is the unmeltable residue left after animal fat has been rendered.

An alternative process cooks slaughterhouse offal to produce a thick, lumpy "stew" which is then sold to the pet food industry to be used principally as tinned cat and dog foods. Such plants are notable for the offensive odour that they can produce and are often located well away from human habitation.

Rendering processes for inedible products

Materials that for aesthetic or sanitary reasons are not suitable for human food are the feedstocks for inedible rendering processes. Much of the inedible raw material is rendered using the "dry" method. This may be a batch or a continuous process in which the material is heated in a steam-jacketed vessel to drive off the moisture and simultaneously release the fat from the fat cells. The material is first ground, then heated to release the fat and drive off the moisture, percolated to drain off the free fat, and then more fat is pressed out of the solids, which at this stage are called "cracklings" or "dry-rendered tankage". The cracklings are further ground to make meat and bone meal. A variation on a dry process involves finely chopping the material, fluidizing it with hot fat, and then evaporating the mixture in one or more evaporator stages. Some inedible rendering is done using a wet process, which is generally a continuous process similar in some ways to that used for edible materials. The material is heated with added steam and then pressed to remove a water-fat mixture which is then separated into fat, water and fine solids by stages of centrifuging and/or evaporation. The solids from the press are dried and then ground into meat and bone meal. Most independent renderers process only inedible material.

These rendering "products" are being used in:

• Non-edible tallow: Used in wax paper, crayons and soap 
  
• Oleic acid: Used in foods, soaps, permanent wave solutions, shampoos, hair dyes, lipsticks, liquid make-ups, nasal sprays 
  
• Glycerine: Used in inks, glues, solvents, antifreeze, cosmetics, foods, mouthwashes, toothpastes, soaps, ointments, plastics

• Stearic acid: Used in rubber, cosmetics, lubricants, candles, hair spray, conditioners, deodorants, creams, food flavoring, pharmaceutical products 

• Linoleic acid: Used in paints and esters 

• Meat meal and bone meal: Used in livestock feed and pet food.
  

History

The development of rendering was primarily responsible for the profitable utilization of meat industry by-products, which in turn allowed the development of a massive industrial-scale meat industry that made food more economical for the consumer. Rendering has been carried out for many centuries, primarily for soap and candle making. The earliest rendering was done in a kettle over an open fire. This type of rendering is still done on farms to make lard (pork fat) for food purposes. With the development of steam boilers, it was possible to jacket the kettle to make a higher grade product and to reduce the danger of fire. A further development came in the nineteenth century with the use of the steam "digester" which was simply a tank used as a pressure cooker in which live steam was injected into the material being rendered. This process is a wet rendering process called "tanking" and was used for both edible and inedible products, although the better grades of edible products were made using the open kettle process. After the material is "tanked", the free fat is run off, the remaining water ("tank water") run into a separate vat, and the solids removed and dried by both pressing and steam-drying in a jacketed vessel. The tank water was either run into a sewer or it was evaporated to make glue or protein concentrate to add to fertilizer. The solids were used to make fertilizer.

Upton Sinclair wrote an expose (1906) on the Chicago meat processing industry which created public outrage. His work helped the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1907 which paved the way for the creation of the FDA.

The pressure tank made possible the development of the Chicago meat industry in the USA, with its huge concentration in one geographic area, because it allowed the economic disposal of byproducts which would otherwise overwhelm the environment in that area. At first, small companies that sprang up near the packers did the rendering. Later the packers themselves took up the industry once they saw the potential. Gustavus Swift, Nelson Morris, and Lucius Darling were among the early pioneers of the U.S. rendering industry with their personal backing and/or direct participation in the developing rendering industry.

Technological innovations came rapidly as the 20th century advanced. Some of these were in the uses for rendered products and others were in the rendering methods themselves. In the 1920s, a batch dry rendering process was invented, in which the material was cooked in horizontal steam-jacketed cylinders that were similar to the fertilizer dryers of the day. Advantages claimed for the dry process were economy in energy use, a better protein yield, faster processing, and fewer obnoxious odours attending the process. Gradually, over the years, the wet "tanking" process was replaced with the dry process, so that by the end of World War II, most rendering installations used the dry process. In the 1960s, continuous dry processes were introduced, one using a variation of the conventional dry cooker and the other making use of a mincing and evaporation process to dry the material and yield the fat. In the 1980s, high energy costs popularized the various "wet" continuous processes. These processes were more energy efficient and allowed the re-use of process vapours to pre-heat or dry the materials during the process.

After World War II synthetic detergents came on the scene which eventually displaced soaps for both domestic and industrial washing. In the early 1950s over 50% of the inedible fat market disappeared. Diversion in these materials into animal feeds soon replaced the lost soap market and eventually became the single largest use for inedible fats.

The widespread use of "boxed beef" in which the beef was cut up into consumer portions at the packing plant rather than at the retail level in local butcher shops and markets meant that the fat and meat scrap raw materials for renderers stayed at the packing plants and were rendered there by packer renderers, rather than by the "independent" rendering companies.

The rejection of animal fats by diet-conscious consumers led to a surplus of edible fats and their resultant diversion into soapmaking and oleochemicals, displacing inedible fats and contributing to the market volatility of this commodity.

The above text has been sourced from Wikipedia

Part 2 of the documentary is further down on this page

We are what we eat:
Dead, rotten, rendered animals

The following article is written by Christopher Rasmussen MD, MS on September 30, 2012


RENDER UNTO CAESAR

Or render therefore to pellets the things that are Cows. We are what we eat, dead, rotten, rendered animals. It all starts with the most secret, scary and sequestered industry in America the rendering business. We’re all kept in the dark about this strange world for very good reasons it turns out. Render means “to process as for industrial use: to render livestock carcasses and to extract oil from fat, blubber, etc. by melting.” So they melt cows-good lord.

BRING OUT YOUR DEAD

Ahh, if it were only livestock. Indeed we have a veritable smorgasbord of dead, wormy, rotten carcasses from across the US. In fact, all roads lead to the renderer. Let’s look at a few.

Did you ever wonder what happens to a 2,000 pound rhino when it finally dies of boredom at the city zoo? Or what happens to all of those poor dogs and cats euthanized at the pound? What about the thousands of pounds of unsold beef, chicken, or pork now decaying in the back of the supermarket? All of these sources including putrid road kill skunks, rats, and raccoons found on U.S. highways; as well as heavy metals from pet and cattle ID tags, surgical pins, needles, plastic and Styrofoam, plastic insecticide patches, green plastic bags containing dead pets from veterinarians, and more [1] will be picked up by your local rendering guy in what looks like an ice cream truck and taken back to the bat cave for some amazing industrial processing. Because they don’t strip euthanized animals of flea collars and pet ID tags before rendering, we’re also indirectly eating ground up metal and chemicals as well. [2]

The slaughterhouses where cattle, pigs, goats, calves, sheep, poultry, and rabbits meet their fate, provide more fuel for rendering. After slaughter, heads, feet, skin, toenails, hair, feathers, carpal and tarsal joints, and mammary glands are removed. This material is sent to rendering. Animals who have died on their way to slaughter are rendered. Cancerous tissue or tumors and worm-infested organs are rendered. Injection sites, blood clots, bone splinters, or extraneous matter are rendered. Contaminated blood is rendered. Stomach and bowels are rendered. Get the picture?

Take note the pentobarbital that animals are euthanized with survives the rendering process. Therefore your pet, a feedlot cow, or you (indirectly) could be eating high levels of an active barbiturate. The burger you ate came from an animal that has been concentrating these and other drugs. Fattened cattle receive hormone pellets injected in their ear containing estrogens, and powerful androgens like trenbolone-that pellet is now part of the renderer’s pallet.

Grab a barf bag here’s some more:

Hydrolyzed hair is a product prepared from clean hair treated by heat and pressure to produce a product suitable for animal feeding.

Spray-dried animal blood is produced from clean, fresh animal blood, exclusive of all extraneous material such as hair, stomach belching (contents of stomach), and urine.

Dehydrated food-waste is any and all animal and vegetable produce picked up from basic food processing sources or institutions where food is processed.

Dehydrated garbage is composed of artificially dried animal and vegetable waste collected sufficiently often that harmful decomposition has not set in and from which have been separated crockery, glass, metal, string, and similar materials.

Dried poultry waste is a processed animal waste product composed primarily of processed ruminant excreta [AKA bird shit] that has been artificially dehydrated.

Dried swine waste is a processed animal-waste product composed primarily of swine excreta [AKA pig shit] that has been artificially dehydrated.

Un-dried processed animal waste product is composed of excreta, with or without the litter, from poultry, ruminants, or any other animal except humans [emphasis mine], which may or may not include other feed ingredients.

“The feed ingredient definitions approved by the AAFCO apply to all animal feeds, including pet foods, unless specific animal species restrictions are noted.” [3]

The United States is the only Western nation where it is legal to feed raw manure to cattle.

Super interesting side note: This is not quite as cool as the plant that can take a fully suited executive and transform him suitcase, top hat, tighty whities and spats, into a quart or two of sweet crude oil-the best type by the way. Sorry you’ll have to look that up on your own but it is true. The plant was designed to take poultry guts and convert it to oil. Now that’s a great idea.

SOYLENT GREEN REVISITED

In a 1997 article in US NEWS & WORLD REPORT, we learned that animal-feed manufacturers and farmers were also experimenting with dehydrated food garbage — fats emptied from restaurant fryers and grease traps, cement-kiln dust, newsprint and cardboard derived from plant cellulose, and even human sewage sludge.

We can’t help but wonder how much more refined and creative the dehydrated food garbage business has become in thirteen years. While most food activists are concerned with genetically modified corn meal in our cattle feed, the situation is closer to the science fiction film Soylent Green.[4]

Who would have thought there are farmers reported to have experimented with cement dust, which is said to have produced a 30% faster weight gain.[5]

To summarize, animal feed from renderers provides a substantial percentage of calories to any and all domesticated animals in the US. That includes your domestic and exotic pets, all Big Meat and Big Agra interests, all research labs, all animals raised for pharmaceuticals and any other animal that requires humans to feed them. Remember that all pet food comes from these places and is probably the biggest reason why dogs are dying at younger and younger ages from cancers. More on this later.

CAFO BEEF THE NEW LA CANTARELLA

As you can see toxins and drugs among other things like PRIONS become concentrated just like the Medieval poison makers used to do from one dead body extractive given to the next animal and on and on ad infinitum in our case. With each successive carcass the poison concentrated until we had La Cantarella or some other powerful venom. What this means in our age besides the obvious abomination, is that we are taking a long walk on a short plank.

In the UK the equivalent of the USDA was disbanded completely and junked when the mad cow horror hit. There is only one solution here and that would be to abolish the USDA and start over from the ground up creating a consumer first institution where revolving doors and conflicts of interest by opportunistic fat asses can never get a toehold.

The renderers, along with the feed and cattle industries are responsible, with a green light from the criminals in the USDA (and their former UK equivalent), of creating mad cow disease. Did you hear me? They created it. Mad cow or bovine spongiform encephalopathy may be our 21st century plaque in the form of Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease or CJD from eating ruminants gone wild. Let’s now take a closer look at the monster plague-in-the-making Big Meat created.

Source: InflaNATION 

Cattle feed, 
what they don’t want you to know

The following article was originally published at Friends Eat

David Kirby with the Huffington Post recently mentioned being “revolted” by what he learned when researching his new book “Animal Factory”: what revolted Kirby was the discovery that cattle are fattened on chicken manure. We were revolted as well until we researched Kirby’s claim.

Now we’re appalled.

Because not only are many of America’s cattle herds fed chicken manure, they’re also fed euthanized dogs and cats, dead skunks, rats, and raccoons found on U.S. highways; as well as heavy metals from pet and cattle ID tags, surgical pins, needles, plastic and Styrofoam, plastic insecticide patches, green plastic bags containing dead pets from veterinarians, and more. All of these items are pulverized and made into dry feed through a process called rendering.

Euthanized dogs and cats as well as road kill also end up at the rendering plant

Euthanized dogs and cats as well as road kill also end up at the rendering plant

Every time you and I eat a steak or hamburger, we may also be eating the pulverized remains of the possum we hit on the road last week, or Aunt Harriet’s poodle, or our neighbor’s cat that was put to sleep and fed to the slaughtered cow we had for dinner. And because they don’t strip euthanized animals of flea collars and pet ID tags before rendering, we’re also eating ground up metal and chemicals as well.

The process of rendering has been around for centuries, and was initially performed to make soap and candles. Simply put, rendering is what occurs when meat is boiled in water to separate fat and lard. But on today’s industrial level, rendering converts animal carcasses — tissue, bones, internal organs, hooves, blood, feathers, and hair, — into dry meat by-products that are sold as animal feed.

Modern rendering today involves tossing animal carcasses into huge steam jacketed vessels; the carcasses are then ground, and cooked at temperatures of between 220 degrees and 270 degrees for twenty minutes to an hour to release fat and moisture.

The tallow is removed and is the source of animal fat in most pet foods; the rest is percolated until fat is pressed out of the solids into “dry-rendered tankage”. The resulting product is ground further and then separated into fat, water and fine solids by stages of centrifuging. The solids are pressed and dried and made into animal feed, commonly known as meat by-products and bone meal.

In a 1997 article in US NEWS & WORLD REPORT, we learned that animal-feed manufacturers and farmers were also experimenting with dehydrated food garbage — fats emptied from restaurant fryers and grease traps, cement-kiln dust, newsprint and cardboard derived from plant cellulose, and even human sewage sludge.

We can’t help but wonder how much more refined and creative the dehydrated food garbage business has become in thirteen years. While most food activists are concerned with genetically modified corn meal in our cattle feed, the situation is closer to the science fiction film Soylent Green.

Last February, Spencer Hunt with THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH reported on the shrinking number of rendering plants in the country. Hunt claimed big businesses have centralized operations and consolidated by buying out smaller ones.

The U.S. has more than 200 working plants, 38 of which are owned by one company, says Hunt. That means dead carcasses rot even longer before they’re trucked to the nearest plant to be boiled and chopped up into feed.

Tom Cook, president of the National Renderers Association in Arlington, Va., says the number of rendering plants are diminishing because disease fears have led many pet-food and livestock-feed manufacturers to reject proteins rendered from dead animals. Do you believe him? I don’t.

As long as there’s a profit to made from recycling dead bodies into animal feed and pet food, you can be sure it will be business as usual. If the number of rendering plants have decreased, it’s because the rendering business is consolidating.

Because these rendering plants serve as huge toxic waste dumps used to recycle animals into animal feed, what we currently have is a food system based on cannibalism, where cattle eat cattle, chickens eat chickens, and pigs eat pigs. Cattle are herbivorous creatures meant to eat grasses. And chickens naturally eat grass, weeds, bugs, and worms.

Source

Tissue, bones, internal organs, hooves, blood, feathers, and hair - it's all being rendered into "something"

Tissue, bones, internal organs, hooves, blood, feathers, and hair - it's all being rendered into "something"

The truth about
pet foods and rendering

By Dr Patty Khuly - October 27, 2010

Urban legends are one thing. The fact that the FDA seriously studied the levels and origins and clinical significance of barbiturates in pet foods fifteen years ago is quite another. Slow to the party, I’ve only just come to appreciate the veracity of all those presumptive urban legends about pets, rendering plants, and pet food.

Sure, I figured. There are bad actors at the margins of every industry. So I always believed in the salacious rumors. As in: Dr. X  and Shelter Y in backwoods Z sell surgically extracted gonads and dead pets to the local rendering plant for inclusion in pet foods! Is your pet eating ovaries, testicles, and drug-tainted dead pets?

It probably happens, I figured. I just never took it too seriously as a pervasive issue. Yet over the years it’s been a significant enough issue for the FDA to think it a worthwhile area of study with respect to barbiturates.

And here, included in a 2004  report to Congress on the rendering industry, is how it happens at the level of the independent rendering plant:

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. (My bolding, btw.)

So how has this continued to pass under our radar? Those generic, unspecified proteins and fats included in your pet's food? They may well —  legally — include canine and feline bodies. This may seem shocking to us in 2010, but this is business as ususal for the rendering industry.

If it’s always been done, why wring our hands over it now?

There are several reasons:

• As a society, we no longer think it’s acceptable for our pets to eat other pets (especially of the same species). Our animal companions are too close to us, emotionally, to consider them cannibalistic.

• Then there’s this emergent view: Those poor shelter animals! After what we’ve done to them, this is just pure insult.

• Two words: "Mad cow." We now understand that some disease transmission is possible via rendered animal protein, heavily processed though it may be.

Back to the barbiturates:

Ten or so years ago there was this nagging question in companion animal veterinary medicine: Why do our barbiturates (back then employed as often for anesthesia or sedation as for euthanasia) seem to be losing their punch?

Then came a slew of articles about destroyed shelter pets getting tossed into the rendering plant and ending up in pet foods. The dirty secret was out of the bag. Yes, some shelters were all too happy to save money by having the carcasses carted off instead of having the expense of incinerating the animal remains. Never mind that most shelter pets were being euthanized via lethal injection using a barbiturate.

Which is when the vet community put two and two together and formed a hypothesis: that pets ingesting low levels of barbiturates in pet foods over a prolonged period of time might actually become resistant to these drugs. Could that be the answer to the diminished potency of barbiturates?

Though it was only an anecdotal finding, this diminishing drug potency issue, the FDA thought it merited a significant look-see, so they devised an experiment to 1) find out how much barbiturate was in pet food, and 2) whether dog and cat carcasses were actually comprising a significant percentage of what ends up in pet food.

Here’s what the report concluded:

The scientists purchased dog food as part of two surveys, one in 1998 and the second in 2000. They found some samples contained pentobarbital...

Because pentobarbital is used to euthanize dogs and cats at animal shelters, finding pentobarbital in rendered feed ingredients could suggest that the pets were rendered and used in pet food.

CVM scientists, as part of their investigation, developed a test to detect dog and cat DNA in the protein of the dog food. All samples from the most recent dog food survey (2000) that tested positive for pentobarbital, as well as a subset of samples that tested negative, were examined for the presence of remains derived from dogs or cats. The results demonstrated a complete absence of material that would have been derived from euthanized dogs or cats. The sensitivity of this method is 0.005% on a weight/weight basis; that is, the method can detect a minimum of 5 pounds of rendered remains in 50 tons of finished feed. Presently, it is assumed that the pentobarbital residues are entering pet foods from euthanized, rendered cattle or even horses.For starters, I've never heard of a cow being euthanized via barbiturate — except one downer cow in vet school that was later used for anatomy class. The large quantities of barbiturates required make it an expensive and impractical option for cattle — especially for those destined to enter the pet food supply. Same goes for horses. Because, if you’ll recall, we used to slaughter horses in the U.S. So why would you sell your beloved horse to a rendering plant after the expense of a private veterinary euthanasia?

I’m not saying the FDA’s findings are wrong, just highly suspect in their ultimate conclusions. Something here doesn’t quite add up. As if the FDA is working a little too hard to talk us animal-activist busybodies down off this uncomfortable ledge we've collectively perched ourselves on.

Yet ultimately, this issue isn’t about whether there’s at least five pounds of protein in 50 tons of feed. Nor is it that the levels of barbiturates, as the FDA explains, are insufficient to render a drug less potent. Rather, it’s about the fact that any pet remains might be in our pets’ food. And that, the FDA concedes, is not up for discussion. This we already know.

Source

Rendering investigation
by Last Chance for Animals

LCA’s SIU conducted an undercover investigation into a rendering plant in Southern California in May 2007.

What is rendering?

Rendering is the process by which raw materials (dead animals and animal byproducts) are converted into a long list of ingredients for industrial and consumer goods.

Sources for raw materials include:
• meat slaughtering and processing plants 
• ranches 
• factory farms 
• feedlots 
• animal shelters 
• veterinary clinics 
• restaurants 
• research laboratories 
• road kill 
• pest control companies

These materials in turn are exported or sold to domestic manufactures of a wide range of industrial and consumer goods including:

• livestock feed 
• pet food and treats 
• soaps 
• pharmaceuticals 
• lubricants 
• plastics 
• shampoo 
• lotion 
• rubber 
• candy 
• lard 
• candles

The National Renderers Association estimated that there are 250-260 rendering plants in North America alone. 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.

The Rendering Process

Raw materials (meat byproducts and dead animals) are ground and placed in cookers, which evaporate moisture and free fat from protein and bone.

A series of conveyers, presses and a centrifuge continue the process of separating fats from solids. The finished fat (tallow, lard, yellow grease) goes into separate tanks, and the solid protein (meat and bone meal, poultry meal) is pressed into cake for processing into feed.

Rendering and Pet Over Population

Rendering is not only the result of the farm animal and restaurant industries; it is clearly the consequence of the companion animal overpopulation crisis. Millions of dogs and cats are euthanized in shelters across the county each year. In cities across the North America healthy companion animals are being euthanized and “disposed of” in rendering facilities. These dogs and cats not only endure a lonely shelter life but also suffer the horrible indignity of being rendered.

So long as animals are raised for food and unwanted companion animals exist rendering will continue.

Stray dogs from Spain 'may have been used to make pet food and farm animal feed'

The following article was originally published in The Daily Mail, written by SEAN POULTER, CONSUMER AFFAIRS EDITOR

• Spanish authorities have sent dozens of pet food samples for testing 
  
• Say proteins from dogs may have been used in some processed food
• Major police operation underway in Spain investigating criminal gangs 
  
• Dogs may have been stolen from sanctuaries, vets and zoos for food
• Food Standards Agency said it is liaising with Spanish counterparts

March 7, 2013 - Stray and abandoned dogs taken from the streets of Spain may have ended up in pet food and farm animal feed, it has emerged.

The authorities in Spain have not ruled out the possibility that protein or fats from the carcasses may even have been used in some processed human food. Britain’s Food Standards Agency says it is aware of the investigation and it is liaising with its counterparts in Spain.

A spokesman said: ‘We are aware of these reports and are in contact with the Spanish authorities about their investigation.

‘We are currently not testing food for meat from dogs. Our priority is to test beef products for gross contamination with horse meat because that is where the problem clearly is.’

A criminal gang in Spain apparently took the bodies of dogs and other animals from animal sanctuaries, vets, zoos and farms, which should have been incinerated, and then processed them to create protein and fats that could be sold on.

Stolen: Gangs apparently took dogs from animal sanctuaries and processed them for sale (file picture Daily Mail)

Evidence has been found at warehouses and processing plants in Galicia and Salamanca.

Last year, police found a warehouse filled with 15 tons of dead stray dogs which they believe were going to be processed into animal feed, in the Galician town of As Neves.

Similar grisly discoveries have been found in warehouses elsewhere in the north of Spain.

Seprona, the environmental arm of the Guardia Civil, has sent dozens of samples of commercial pet food to the Anfaco-Cecopesca laboratories in Vigo, Galicia, after a judge received reports from an industry whistle-blower.

According to laboratory tests performed in one of the processing plants based in the town of Aldeaseca de la Frontera, in Salamanca, fat samples destined for animal feed had DNA traces of both sheep and dog.

Cannibalism: Spanish authorities have sent pet food samples for testing after reports from a whistleblower. Tests have already shown fat samples to be used in animal feed had traces of both sheep and dog

A major police investigation has been underway since March 2012, according to a report in Spain’s El Mundo newspaper.

The pressure group Viva, which campaigns against meat eating, is writing to UK supermarkets to ask them to test their food for the presence of dog and other species.

Its campaigns manager, Justin Kerswell, said: ‘It is a horrifying possibility that dog and rat meat might have entered the human food chain, but given the depth of ineptitude shown and the EU-wide fraud the horse meat scandal has exposed, it seems entirely plausible.

‘It may only be a matter of time before dog, rat and perhaps even rat meat is found in British processed food or farmed animal feed.

‘British supermarkets have been selling horse meat to consumers for years without knowing it, so what else has been on sale? They will have no idea unless they specifically test for it.’

Scottish Labour MEP, Alyn Smith, said: ‘These revelations from Spain indicate just where I fear this may be going. By the time meat becomes "protein" then traceability all but breaks down, especially in the pet and animal feed markets.

‘I'm concerned that given the EU-wide pet food market this contamination could be considerably more widespread.

‘The spectre of forced cannibalism turns this issue into something considerably more serious, and we need reassurance that this is an isolated incident of criminality, albeit it would seem on a pretty significant scale given the reported sourcing of 15 tonnes of dogs must take some organisation.’

Source

Please read also:
You and your cat and Mad Cow Disease