There are several hundred Rendering Plants across the U.S. They quietly dispose of millions of tons of dead animals, meat waste and fat.

What is commonly found in rendering plants?

In a Rendering Plant, you would see animals in various states such as disabled, diseased, dying, dead and decaying. These animals include skunks, snakes, opossums, cats, dogs, circus animals, raccoons, horses and foxes. Furthermore, Rendering Plants process billions of pounds of decaying flesh and kitchen grease, obtained mainly from fast food restaurants, into commercial meat and bone meal, tallow and yellow grease where much of it ends up in commercial pet foods.

Rendering Plants claim that by removing dead, decaying animals from our streets, they are doing a public service and not doing it for profits. If that were true, why would the Rendering Plants sell their products to dogs and cat food companies?

A look inside a rendering plant

Inside a Rendering Plant, there is a large vat used to cook this mixture of flesh and grease and that creates heat to the tune of about 90% inside the plant. There are piles of animals awaiting their turn to be added to the vat. The piles of skunks, rats, cattle, sheep, pigs, dogs, cats, raccoons and various other animals seem to take on a life of their own as maggots swarm all over the piles.

Two men operating Bobcat mini dozer loading the raw materials into a 10-foot-deep stainless steel pit. A giant auger-grinder begins to turn. Popping bones and squeezing flesh are sounds from a nightmare you’ll never forget.

From this process, a fat of yellow grease or tallow is produced and skimmed off. At a hammer mill press, the remaining moisture is squeezed out and pulverized into a gritty powder. After bones and hair are removed, all that’s left are meat, bone meal and yellow grease.

Every day, hundreds of Rendering Plants across the U.S. truck millions of tons of this “food enhancer” to poultry ranches, cattle feed-lots, dairy and hog farms, fish feed plants and pet food manufacturers where it is mixed with other ingredients to feed the billions of animals that meat-eating humans, in turn, will eat.

Are your pets benefiting from these ingredients?

Products labeled as meat meal, meat by-products, poultry meal, Poultry by-products, fish meal, fish oil, yellow grease, tallow, beef fat and chicken fat all are products of Rendering Plants.

If you think that’s all of the bad stuff that goes into your pet foods – think again. There are fles collars from dogs, cats and other pets, euthanized drugs used to put down pets, Dursban from cattle insecticide patches and pharmaceutical leaks from antibiotics in livestock.

Heavy metals from pet ID tags, surgical pins and needles as well as plastic wrap from supermarket rejected meat, chicken and fish. According to Rendering Plant officials, it’s not economically feasible to have someone at the Rendering Plants to remove the ID tags, Styrofoam trays and shrink wrap. So they all go into the mix that becomes part of your pet food.

It’s not unfair to conclude that without Rendering Plants, U.S. cities could be filled with diseased and rotting carcasses. Diseases and bacteria could infect the population but the big question is; is it safe for pet food manufacturers to use products from Rendering Plants in our pet foods?

In the final analysis, we have to understand that Rendering Plants produce products that are toxic to our pets. The drug Sodium Phenobarbital is used to euthanize pets of all type. This drug is not destroyed in the rendering process; therefore the product produced by the Rendering Plants that go into our pet foods contains sodium Phenobarbital.

All pet owners want is food for our four-legged friends that is wholesome, nutritional and free of toxic ingredients. The pet food companies have proven they are not going to do that.

Why is it that we as pet owners refuse to invest the time needed to find out what is really in a bag of commercial pet food? Pet food companies will continue to produce pet foods that are killing our pets until we start making informed decisions.

You must realize that you are, in fact, sentencing your pet to a premature and painful death. Yes, I’m speaking to all you pet owners that purchase the commercial pet foods. Because of your failure to learn what goes into the foods you feed your pets, the commercial pet food industry capitalizes on that and while pet owners spend billions of dollars buying this cheap and toxic foods, your pets die prematurely and the pet food companies laugh all the way to the banks.