The Importance of Advocating for the Rendering Industry

Myths versus Facts

Myth: “Foot and Mouth Disease would have to be dealt with differently than Avian Influenza because you can’t render chickens due to the feathers”

Truth: Rendering can dispose of carcasses, feathers, and offal in an environmentally friendly way

I heard that particular myth at Wide Area Recovery and Resiliency Program meeting last year.  I looked around and most of the people in the room were nodding their heads. It was at that moment that I knew something had stopped working correctly with our government relations with the Department of Homeland Security.  Not only are there rendering companies that deal almost exclusively in chickens but the feathers can be hydrolyzed into their own product—feathermeal.  To say that chickens can’t be rendered shows a concerning lack of knowledge about the rendering industry by some government officials and consultants there to answer questions.

Why does it even matter?  The particular meeting I was at was talking about what the government should do in an animal disease outbreak.  Rendering, along with landfills and perhaps composting, were shown as being part of the solution.  Landfill operators were sitting at the table too but renderers had been missing from the discussion.  Because of this, the group had up-to-date information on landfills but said misstatement after misstatement about the rendering industry. It was important because the information from the set of meetings was going to be used to draft a set of recommendations for the government in the case of foreign disease outbreak such as Foot and Mouth Disease.

That being said, they were willing to learn.  Since that original meeting I have attended 3 more meetings, presenting at all three about the rendering industry.  People want to know more.  They are interested in rendering and understand that it’s vital.  The rendering industry has spent a lot of years being invisible and it’s going to take some time for people—even people in the agriculture industry—to understand exactly what it is we do.  The last meeting I went to about waste disposal in the event of a foreign animal disease outbreak included a number of state veterinarians and state public information officers.  The more they can truly understand and appreciate the rendering industry before a major news event, the better.

It is particularly important to keep up to date with government groups because of the constant turnover in the government.  There is a constant flow in and out of Washington and even though it feels like you are constantly talking to public officials, the truth is they might be different people than were at the meeting the year before.  This can be a particularly obvious problem when contrasted with the rendering industry, where many of the operations are family businesses, and people work their whole lives at the same company.