Rendering Plant

I have heard alot of you talk about breeding your own feeders. I have also heard it suggested more than once that dog chow was considered a good diet resulting in high quailty feeders. I assume that most of you breed your own mice so that you know where your feeders are coming from and there diet.

I want yall to do a search on rendering plants. This is where some of the main ingredients come from in pet food and agricutral feed. Here is one link to get you started on your research.
http://www.preciouspets.org/rendering.htm

It just happened to be the first one that came up in my search. I put alot of research in my pets and I came across this a couple of years ago. I had taken on a second job around christmas working for a temp service one time and was sent to one of these plants as a temp job. I lasted 2 hours before i puked and quit.

OMG!!!! That has to be one of the most horrible things I have ever read. I have never fed dog food to anything but my dogs, I use Mazzuri Lab blocks for rodents, but I feel bad for my last dog now! No wonder he had health problems! Does anyone know which brands of feed, dog or otherwise, are better or worse than others?

Wow, they certainly slanted that article nicely. I don't think Peta could have done any better themselves. And yes, I've been in numerous packing plants and have viewed their rendering works as well as the entire process of meat packing from stun to finished product several times. Sure seems like a Hollywood rendition of an article to me, and holds very little similarity to the places I have visited. Great shock value, though. I look forward to the DVD.

Could we have another view? Another article? I'm all for the truth. It was very nice shock value wasn't it?

I do know, however that processes like this, maybe not this exact one, but the act of feeding dead animals to other animals in the form of bone meal and other products has, in the past, led to outbreaks of BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) AKA Mad cow disease. It was something we studied rather heavily in my Micro class. These problems were a while ago and I am sure things have been done to prevent future outbreaks, but it does make you wonder how good of an idea it really is.

Yes, and I'm not saying rendering plants are without problems and everything is candy and roses, but that article was wayyy out in Peta land. I tried to find you an acurate article, but was so overwhelmed with shock factor b.s. that I quit looking. I doubt many rendering plants put up a page on "how it works" as no one wants to read that. They want the sensationalized, propaganda articles.

Rendering is becoming less and less popular due to the problem with prions like BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy / Mad Cow Disease) and Scrapie and the like as well as the increasing costs involved. Those little pieces of protein (prions) are difficult to 100% denature, even with pressure cooking the product at 280. The discovery of this class of pathogen has caused changes in the screening process of what is allowed into rendering for food products and changed feeding practices world wide. At least in the plants I've been to, rendering for food product only allowed certain stock in. The diseased animals or those that don't pass inspection during the meat packing process were not rendered for meal. I never saw a cat, dog, flea collar, or otherwise anywhere near the plant. They did not just throw wild animals, if an animal could not walk in, it was not utilized, regardless of the cause, and they only rendered pork or beef or whatever happened to be the specialty of the facility. These are the places that put out the bone meal and the animal by-product. This was the process of utilizing the bones, muscle that wasn't removed, organ meats, and etc. that aren't packaged on their own (like brain, heart and heart valves for medical uses, some kidneys, liver, etc. as well as the meats).

Other rendering plants dispose of animal remains and function to try and decrease environmental contamination with potentially harmful bacteria and viruses and reduce the bulk of dead and decaying carcasses. Incinerators are also gaining popularity and is how many dog and cat remains are processed (cremation). This leaves you with ash and mineral bone and inactivates disease.

As Quigs stated in this thread, feed your dogs dog food, and your rodents, rodent food.

My two cents.... (do I have some change due?)

regards,
jazz

That was pretty extreme

First of all please dont associate me with PETA. I am dead set against those nut jobs.

So you can see both sides of the story
http://www.nationalby-products.com/

An article from the NY Times?
http://www.mad-cow.org/~tom/render_ed.html

I have worked in a rendering plant for all of about 2 hours as i stated before. Did i see a bunch off roadkill piled high on the dock NO. What i did see was the plant i worked in was attached to the purina plant via chutes and pipes. After looking into it caused more curiosity. I posted only as intresting thing.

Well my dog gets high quality all-natural ingredients in her dog food, which a dog should be eating. Maybe one should consider where THEIR human food comes from? We're all worried about what we put into our mice that go into our snakes...but don't think twice about the side of beef we purchased from the local grocery store. Where it came from, what it ate, where it was processed. Just goes to show how unless you don't raise it yourself, you're not as healthy as you thought you were.

I feed my mice a rodent lab block diet as their primary, and only food. I supplement with treats of Wheaties flakes and the occasional dog food bit for added protein if I've got a colony with babies or pregnant mommas. But that's it.

And I agree with Hurley, they deserve an Emmy for that one-sided portrayal. Something has to happen with the remains from a slaughterhouse, and most of it goes off to a good, useful end. But I think that article was totally out of proportion with what actually happens.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but most vets around here let you take your pet home to bury it, or if in the case of thousands of animals euthanized at shelters, they're cremated.


Edit: 10 mins later I thought of something else..

Which reminds me of that article in Discover magazine a while back where they took all of these TONS of turkey offal (leftovers from processing) and rendered it down to the basic components of hydrocarbons and made gasoline, oil, kerosene, etc all in the matter of hours. They recently implemented a larger scale plant near a Butterball plant in the Midwest (I'm wanting to say Missouri) and it's working like a charm. That's the first large scale test they're passing right now, and the interest in it has been awesome. And goodness knows the US needs to become independent of the Middle East that supports our huge oil thirst. This may be one of the the ways to do that. So just imagine if we stopped processing it for ingredients to put in pet/animal feed, but instead made something useful out of it.

Several articles I found on the subject:

National Geographic News - Turkey Fuel

A Chemist's Thoughts

Thermal Depolymerization (did I spell that right?)

Quote I found that was interesting from the article: "The beauty of this process is that nearly any carbon-based waste will work just fine. Dead critters (Brad Lemfey, author of the Discover piece, used a 175 pound human as an example – such would render out to 38 pounds of oil. 7 pounds of gas, 7 pounds of minerals and 123 pounds of water."

Edited again: I found the Discover article I was talking about, but you can't view it for free (figures). So I paid $1 for it and have it. If anyone wants to read the original article, e-mail me at: [email protected] and I'll send a copy off to ya. =)

cowboyman13 thank you for that link I been telling this to people that some states allow dog and cat to be used to make animal fat for dog food. Get a good rodent chow for breeding. or netro brand doog fooh it is made all natulal and out of human grade food not from scrapes or byproducts