"Selling the byproducts means the
difference between profit and loss for the industry, and affordable and
unaffordable meat for the consumer," says Dr. Breiter.
Dr. Bums adds: "If we didn't develop
markets for the byproducts, we would have to dispose of them, which would
create a different set of problems."
Still, visiting a modern meat-packing
operation can inspire awe as well as a new appreciation for vegetarianism
- just as more people would probably cook at home if they could peer into
the kitchen of their favorite bistro.
American Slaughterhouse Statistics:
On an average day in America
following animals and birds are killed:
Number Killed per day in USA
Modern slaughterhouses are part
assembly line, part chop shop. An efficient plant processes 250 cows
an hour, 16 hours a day, breaking them into dozens of parts as the
carcass flow down the line on steel hooks.
First, the cows are led up a ramp.
Their heads are placed in a holder and they are zapped unconscious. A
worker, called the "sticker," plunges a sharp blade into the animal's
jugular vein. As the cow dies, the spurting blood is collected in a
trough; later it is baked to a dark red powder that is protein-rich animal
Next the hooves are removed and the
hide is stripped for sale as leather and suede (if the cow is pregnant,
the unborn calf's hide is stripped to make the top grade of leather,
called slunk). Then the head is sliced off, the chest split open and
the internal organs removed.
The organs - called offal - are sent
to the offal room and placed on something akin to a conveyor belt, where
workers in splattered smocks segregate the parts: one group collects
stomach linings, another lungs. Other workers remove hearts, pancreases or
thyroids. Most of the bones and hooves are rendered - that is, baked to
make bone meal, a fertilizer and high-protein animal feed; the rest
are sold, primarily to manufacturers of collagen, gelatin and pet toys.
A parallel process operates in the
"fabrication area" where workers carve away the edible meats - the round,
the top round, the loin, strip steaks, rib, chuck. Like car parts, each
piece of the animal has its own price and market. Cow lips, which sell for
58 cents a pound, for the most part are shipped to Mexico, where they are
shredded, spiced, grilled and used for taco filling.
Many cow hearts, 27 cents a pound,
are exported to Russia to make sausage. Much of the meat from the cow's
cheek, 55 cents a pound is sold to American meat processors for sausage
and baloney. Of course, many of these "variety meats" are sold to pet-food
companies, which prefer to buy the separated parts.
"Just as a chef uses precise
proportions to make a fine meal, the pet-food people follow recipes
calling for different quantities of hearts, livers and so forth to get the
right taste and nutritional content," says Mark Klein, a spokesman for
Cargill, the Minneapolis-based meat packing company.
Until the rise of biotechnology -
which allows drug companies to "ferment" medications in the laboratory
using recombinant DNA - many pharmaceuticals were extracted from animals.
Nevertheless, fetal blood from cows (roughly $40 to $50 a quart) remains
an important tool for the development of drugs and medical research.
Other medications - and markets - are
made by extracting hormones and other compounds from the cow's glands. The
pituitary glands ($19.50 a pound) are collected to make medicines that
control blood pressure and heart rate. Twenty different steroids are made
from fluids pulled from the adrenal glands ($2.85 a pound). The lungs
(6 cents a pound) go into Heparin, an anti-coagulant. And the pancreas
(63 cents a pound) is still a source of insulin for diabetics allergic to
the synthetic kind; it takes about 26 cows to maintain one diabetic for a
The highest price is fetched by the
most dubious product � cattle gallstones, which are sold for $600 an ounce
to merchants in the Far East who peddle them as an aphrodisiac.
It is no small paradox that much of
the excess gristle and fat is sold to companies that promise to make
people beautiful. Lipstick, makeup bases, eyeliners, eyebrow pencils, hair
rinses and bubble baths wouldn't be the same without fat-derived tongue
twisters like butyl stearate, glycol stearate and PEG150 distearate.
Collagen, a protein extracted
from the hides, hooves and bones, is the key ingredient in age-defying
moisturizers and lotions; dermatologists inject it into people�s
faces to fill out crow's feet and laugh lines. It is also used to make
breast implants and as a medium in which cells can be grown.
Soaps may trumpet their use of
cocoa butter and exotic plant extracts, but most are still made from
animal fats. Indeed, the word soap is said to derive from Mount
Sapo, a prime spot for animal sacrifice in ancient Rome. The locals who
washed their tunics in the nearby valley streams noticed that the runoff
of animal fat and ashes made their whites whiter and their colors
During the lost 30 years, fewer
Americans have had the hankering to dine on cow brains, pig�s feet and
bull testicles. But our appetite for hooves - which are used to make
gelatin, is insatiable. An odorless, tasteless protein, gelatin is used in
hundreds of products including Gummy Bears, ice cream, hard candies and,
of course, Jell-O. It is also the secret behind many "fat free" products.
"Gelatin gives the creamy mouth feel people want without the calories,"
says John Barrows, manager of marketing communications for Nabisco Inc.
A back-to-nature movement among pet
lovers has treated another expanding market for animal by products.
Squeaky plastic toys are giving way to knuckle joints and beef tendons, ox
tails and toenails, chew hooves and 10-pound mammoth bones taken from
Which leaves one question. What do
they do with the undigested paunch material? Until now, not much. But Dr.
Bums of the Kansas Department of Agriculture says there's an exciting
development just around the corner. "I can't spill the beans just yet," he
says. "But pretty soon we'll announce for a new process for converting it
back into animal feed."