WASTE NOT WANT NOT

[Stanley]

Brad posted about his experiences seeing how food was 'processed'. I thought it might be time for a rerun of this 2000 article:

WASTE NOT WANT NOT? 8/02/2000
I think I may have been very lucky in my choice of parents, we are a long living family with an extremely varied ancestry. However, when I reach 100 years old and they ask me what the secret is I shall tell them that it was most probably down to spending twenty five years of my working life as a trucker and industrial boiler repairer. It gave me some clues as to what foods to avoid!
Forty years ago I used to wonder why I was carting bone meal, hoof and horn meal, bagged broiler house muck and greaves into animal feed manufacturers. (‘Greaves’ is the trade name for knacker yard meat meal which has been partially cooked and left to start putrefying as this makes it easier to process) I found out that they were all high in protein and were an economic way of improving the analysis of the end product, cattle cake, and allowing cheap bulking agents like chopped straw to be used as well. During a long spell as a cattle wagon driver I asked the bloke I worked for why he always bought ‘coarse ration’ instead of cattle cake as it was so expensive. He said it was better for the cattle and the reason it was so dear was because you could take a handful and see exactly what was in it. A handful of cake told you nothing.
Thirty years on I realised that what I had been looking at was the genesis of BSE in cattle and new variant CJD in humans. The only reason it had been done was to raise profit margins.

During the fifties and sixties I saw many more examples of this sort of adulteration. Greaves were used regularly as raw material at fat refiners. Skin oil, which is extracted from hides when they are processed, went to margarine and toilet soap manufacturers. (Large posters on the wall at the skin yard proclaimed ‘BEWARE OF ANTHRAX!’) Lanolin was extracted from sewage works and went to the manufacturers of toiletries, particularly hand creams and lipstick. Limestone flour which is very finely powdered limestone rock went into the large industrial bread bakeries to provide the added calcium. I carried all these things and drew some conclusions from my knowledge. You’ve guessed it, don’t eat margarine, render your own dripping and avoid anything with lanolin in it!

I began to realise that whilst simple economics was the root cause which drove these practices there was another element, the use of waste which would otherwise have been a negative cost because it would have to be disposed of in some way. What a brilliant business ploy, convert waste which was a financial liability, into a by-product that could be sold to enhance some other industry’s profits!

Another job I had and enjoyed for years was carrying cattle for a very good and caring cattle dealer. Our trade was in high quality rearing calves for the dairy industry to Scotland and the best scotch heifers back down to Northern England for sale to dairy farmers, many of whom sold milk direct to the public through their own retail rounds in the surrounding towns. They were on high profits, bought good beasts and looked after their business. I loved the cattle and in all the time I drove for this man never had a casualty except for one still-born calf. (I used to have to stop and calve a beast many a time as I was bringing them down the country) However, there was a trade in the markets that we went to which used to puzzle me. Many calves, particularly bull calves, are not worth rearing. One name for these is ‘bobby calves’, another, more accurate description is ‘killers’. As soon as their navels were dry (if they were lucky) these calves were taken into the market and sold to specialised dealers. I asked what they were used for and was told that the manufacturers of baby and geriatric foods bought them to render down for gravy. I have to say that I never delivered any of these calves to their final destination but have no reason to believe that what I was told was untrue. Only a couple of months ago I visited the dealer I used to work for and he told me that the killer trade was still active and that nowadays the dealers wanted calves with a little more age on them because ‘the meat will have firmed up.’ This signals to me that they are going for human consumption.

Later in my career I was working for a firm which repaired large industrial boilers. Many people use the phrase ‘Steam Age’ as a pejorative term to describe something which is out-of-date or obsolete. Nothing could be further from the truth, many industrial processes still require steam and one of the major users is the food industry. When we went in to repair a boiler we were invisible, an essential part of the furniture so the business of the plant went on as though we weren’t there. Because of this, in the course of my work over the last ten years I have seen further examples of the miracle which is turning waste into profit.

I have worked on a plant where out-of-date cheese and butter was brought in from supermarkets. The cheese was processed and emerged as mozzarella for pizza toppings. The butter was combined with vegetable oil from EEC intervention stocks that was anywhere from ten to fifteen years old, no mistaking this, it was clearly labelled and dated. The resulting goo was processed, I think by hydrogenation, and emerged as ‘baker’s shortening’ with a shelf life of six months.

I saw small vans coming into the same factory and unloading and enquired about them. They were providing a useful service to restaurants and chip shops by collecting their used cooking oil for free disposal. Needless to say, this was not a charitable enterprise, I don’t know what was being done with it but I think I could hazard a good guess. I was talking to man who knows about these things a few weeks ago and he told me that the service wouldn’t be free for much longer as the trade had taken a knock when some entrepreneur in Europe had decided that his profit margin could be boosted by augmenting his vegetable oil with used transformer oil! The big problem with this is that apart from the fact that it was mineral oil he was introducing heavy metals into the mix. Evidently this ploy had been discovered and the result was a drop in profit in the industry due to better regulation.

Another class of plant we worked in were the ‘protein converters’. These are factories which take in abattoir and meat processor’s offal and convert the waste into ‘protein granules’. Look on the side of a tin of pet food and you will find that ‘protein granules’ or ‘meat by-products’ figures in the list of contents. What this really means is chicken heads, feet, feathers and guts and any other by-product you can imagine from an abattoir. These are not in prime condition when they arrive at the plant and you can imagine the smell. The miracle is that when you open the tin of pet food it smells good enough to eat!

I realise that some of my knowledge on this subject is forty years old by now and some things have changed, However, the lesson I have drawn from these experiences is even fresher than the products of the ‘miracle factories’ as I call them. It is quite simply that some essential questions are not being asked in the debate on food safety.

Food processors, manufacturers, retailers and restaurants should be made to account for their waste. There should be a clear audit trail which allows verification of the means of disposal. This regulatory framework should be tight enough to ensure that sub-standard food is not allowed re-entry into the food chain whether it be human or animal.

It is blindingly obvious now that abattoir waste should never have been allowed entry to herbivorous animal feed. The cost has far exceeded any savings that were made at the time. My argument is that equally damaging practices are still current and that nobody can tell what the consequences will be. It is common sense that once food has deteriorated it should be destroyed and not re-processed.

I have a fear for the young of this country. Talk to any medical person and ask them about the unexplained rise in things like wheezing after exercise, asthma, glue ear and food poisoning. We have no clear answers as to what is causing these disabilities. Suppose it was connected with re-cycling waste food? I’m all right, I eat butter, eggs, good local meat, cook for myself and bake my own bread. I’ve lived a hard life with lots of physical exercise so there’s a good foundation to my body. What’s the outlook for the young with a worsening diet and lack of physical work? The least we can do for them is to make sure that they aren’t forced to eat crap just to satisfy some multi-national’s profit motive.

[Published in the Food Magazine, Spring issue, 2000]

[Whyperion]

Watching Telly the other day , think it was the ITV1 The Hungry Sailors .A small farmer explained that they were looking for young bulls to bring in for feeding up. UK Veal is I think from the memory up to 18 months old , and generally field reared and is attempted to be marketed as the bovine equivalent to Lamb , so that looks to be a more modern solution to one of the areas of concern above.

[Stanley]

Whippy, market for veal isn't big enough to absorb the surplus bull calves and many are wrong breed anyway. The official story is that they are shot and sent for rendering. Being an old cynic I think there could still be a trade in 'bobbies' for making meat stock but have no knowledge. It costs a butcher £50 to send a wheelie bin of offal for destruction. The trade will still be based on the differential between destructor costs and potential profit if it can be converted.

[Stanley]

I've brought this back up in view of the present furore about adulterated meat. I wrote Waste Not Want Not in 2000 and it was published by the Food Magazine, a totally independent and authoritative publication which won't even accept advertising. Some things never change and the manipulation of the food chain to generate profit is alive and well. I said then "The least we can do for them [the young] is to make sure that they aren’t forced to eat crap just to satisfy some multi-national’s profit motive". One is allowed to be wise before the event and what we are seeing today is exactly the same syndrome I described in the article.
I shall say it again, the greatest danger to food safety and the health of the consumer is the power of the food industry to manipulate the sources of their ingredients to make better profits. If recognition of this comes out of the present scandals perhaps we may see some meaningful regulation that isn't dictated by the food processors and the supermarkets. At the very least they should not be allowed to police their own standards and supply chains.

[Stanley]

Bumped again. The more people read this the better!

[hartley353]

Good article stanley, During my working career as an electro/mechanical engineer my work has taken me into abattoirs, all abattoirs have goverment inspectors on site what used to concern me was that after the abattoir had closed,and the inspectors had gone home they would reopen to process injured and sick animals brought in ,some of these animals would be cattle with broken limbs. From what i saw this meat went for human consumption, obviously without requisite stamps.

Margarine factorys are horrible places,the stink of the ingredients as they are processed is unbelievable how it ends up on our table as a semi palatable product is beyond my imagination it can not be possible that it contains any goodness.

And as to food factories making ready to eat meals,or parts of meals,using processes including mechanically recovered meats it would require only one tv program to leave the greedy Super markets with their stock unsaleable.

For my parting shot the humble Chicken, Fifty years ago a chicken was a luxory, Now from egg to table eight weeks,I Know of one processing plant in Argentina that can process 3,000,000 birds a day they arrive at the plant in a wretched state and die in a most horrific manner where does this product go, yes you have guessed it the UK.
You may now realise from one of my earlier postings why I am particular about what I eat and never chicken unless seen alive by me.

ps. I've just read an article today that says european directives did come in last year over the use of mechanically recovered meat,maybe this explains the rush to find another cheap protein supply. eg Horse and donkey meat.

[Whyperion]

Reading the above and comparing with what passes for EU food standards, given the difficulties now of British Farmers and Processors supplying into the EU, when presumably the same rules applied for items into UK when it was part of EU, surely the required and known documentation must have been at least known about?

[Stanley]

Bumped. This is all as pertinent now as ever.... The more people that read it the better.

[Gloria]

[plaques]

A recent claim was that a check on lorries bringing meat into the UK from the EU had 21 out of 22 containing contaminated meat. Immediate the outcry went up 'what are the EU doing sending us bad meat when all our meat entering the EU has to meet strict standards' . The answer was that the EU had invested heavily in controls to check incoming food. It was up to the UK to do the same for food entering the UK, something we never did. Therefore all the bad lads of the EU meat trade would send their rubbish off to the UK knowing it wouldn't be checked at the UK side.

[Stanley]

Quite true Ken and yet another example of what Johnson was opening us up to with his 'oven ready deal'. We forecast then that the law of unintended consequences would kick in and it has done so, big time!

[Tizer]

Waste not....we keep all our caps off plastic milk bottles. We are both involved in hobbies and crafts and the caps are very useful for holding small amounts of paints or glues. Mrs Tiz also takes them to the craft circle she attends so they can dole out small amounts of PVA etc.

I've dismantled an old model railway layout and the timber side strips are being used to make a set of shelves to display some of my mineral and rock specimens.

[Wendyf]

The old polythene that we stripped from the polytunnel last week was quickly claimed by someone on a local facebook page for their garden projects. Saved me taking it to the tip!

[Stanley]

"I've dismantled an old model railway layout"
I've learned something about Peter I didn't know before..... Always knew he was one of the good guys.