What is Rendering?

The rendering industry is little known outside of the meat industry. This part of the meat supply chain provides a crucial service to Meat producers and processors around the world.

What is the role of rendering in the meat industry?

Rendering plants provide a crucial service to meat producers by creating commercially viable products from the parts of animals which would otherwise have to be disposed of, incurring both financial costs to meat producers, and environmental costs to society. Through the rendering process, low value animal by-products are turned into marketable commodities in demand across pet food, animal feed, fertiliser pharmaceutical, energy, and other industries.

What is a rendering plant?

A rendering plant is a facility where animal by-products (ABPs) are processed to convert them into usable materials. ABPs, which include parts of animals not typically consumed by humans (such as bones, fat, and offal), are transformed into ingredients for various products, including animal feed, soap, candles, biodiesel, and fertilisers.

What are ABPs? ABPs are divided into three categories:

• Category 1 - High Risk / Disposal Only
• Category 2 - Medium Risk / Not for Animal Consumption
• Category 3 - Low Risk / Not for Human Consumption.

What is rendering?

It is a cooking or drying process that destroys pathogens and stabilises animal by-products, removing the moisture and separating the fat and protein meal components into a range of marketable products, as explained by the food and biomass renewables association (Fabra).

Rendering Process image curtesy of Fabra

What kind of products are created in the rendering process?

The rendering process removes the moisture from the ABPs and creates two categories of products, rendered fat (tallow) and protein (meal) based products.

Fat-Based Products

1. Tallow: Used in soap, candles, lubricants, biodiesel, and animal feed.
2. Biodiesel: Produced from animal fats through transesterification.
3. Oleochemicals: Derived from animal fats for use in detergents, surfactants, soaps, and cosmetics.

Protein-Based Products

1. Meat and Bone Meal (MBM): Used as a protein supplement in animal feed.
2. Blood Meal: High-nitrogen fertiliser and protein-rich feed ingredient.
3. Feather Meal: Used in animal feed as a rich source of protein.
4. Poultry By-Product Meal: Used in pet foods and animal feed.
5. Gelatine: Used in food products, pharmaceuticals, and photography.
6. Greaves: Solid residue used in pet foods or as raw material for further processing.
7. Fertilisers: Bone meal and blood meal are used as organic fertilisers.

Rendering Products Overview, curtesy of Fabra.