GROSSER THAN GROSS...
Book Material




2003
"The Dark Side of Recycling" (Published in the fall 1990 issue of Earth Island Journal)

Note: In February 1990, the San Francisco Chronicle carried a macabre two-part story detailing how stray dogs and cats and pound animals are routinely rounded up by meat renderers and ground up into -- of all things -- pet food. According to Keith Wood, the researcher who brought the information to the Chronicle, the paper buried the story and deleted many of the charges Wood had documented. A report Wood worked on for ABC television's 20/20 was similarly watered down. In exasperation, Wood brought his story to Earth Island Journal. A warning to readers: this report is not for the squeamish.

A RENDERING PLANT SOMEWHERE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA -- The rendering plant floor is piled high with "raw product". Thousands of dead dogs and cats; heads and hooves from cattle, sheep, pigs and horses; whole skunks; rats and raccoons -- all waiting to be processed. In the 90 degree heat, the piles of dead animals seem to have a life of their own as millions of maggots swarm over the carcasses.

Two bandanna-masked men begin operating Bobcat mini-dozers, loading the "raw" into a ten-foot deep stainless steel pit. They are undocumented workers from Mexico doing a dirty job. A giant auger-grinder at the bottom of the pit begins to turn. Popping bones and squeezing flesh are sounds from a nightmare you will never forget.

Also See:
Outcry Over Pets in Pet Food
Los Angeles Times 1/6/02

Food not Fit for a Pet
by Wendell O. Belfield DVM / Earth Island Journal - Spring 1996

Rendering is the process of cooking raw animal material to remove the moisture and fat. The rendering plant works like a giant kitchen. The cooker, or "chef", blends the raw product in order to maintain a certain ratio between the carcasses of pets, livestock, poultry waste and supermarket rejects.

Once the mass is cut into small pieces, it is transported to another auger for fine shredding. It is then cooked at 280 degrees for one hour. The continuous batch cooking process goes on non-stop, 24 hours a day, seven days a week as meat is melted away from bones in the hot "soup". During this cooking process, the "soup" produces a fat of yellow grease or tallow that rises to the top and is skimmed off. The cooked meat and bone are sent to a hammermill press, which squeezes out the remaining moisture and pulverizes the product into a gritty powder. Shaker screens sift out excess hair and large bone chips. Once the batch is finished, all that is left is yellow grease, meat and bone meal.

A Meaty Menu
As the American Journal of Veterinary Research explains, the recycled meat and bone meal is used as "a source of protein and other nutrients in the diets of poultry and swine and in pet foods, with lesser amounts used in the feed of cattle and sheep. Animal fat is also used in animal feeds as an energy source." Every day, hundreds of rendering plants across the United States 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.

Rendering plants have different specialties. The labeling designation of a particular "run" of product is defined by the predominance of a specific animal. Some product label names are: meat meal, meat by-products, poultry meal, poultry by-products, fish meal, fish oil, yellow grease, tallow, beef fat and chicken fat.

Rendering plants perform one of the most valuable functions on Earth: they recycle used animals. Without rendering, our cities would run the risk of becoming filled with diseased and rotting carcasses. Fatal viruses and bacteria would spread uncontrolled through the population.

The Dark Side
Death is the number one commodity in a business where the demand for feed ingredients far exceeds the supply of raw product. But this elaborate system of food production through waste management has evolved into a recycling nightmare. Rendering plants are unavoidably processing toxic waste.

The dead animals (the "raw") are accompanied by a whole menu of unwanted ingredients. Pesticides enter the rendering process via poisoned livestock, fish oil laced with bootleg DDT and other oregano-phosphates that have accumulated in the bodies of West Coast mackerel and tuna.

Because animals are frequently shoved into the pit with flea collars still attached, oregano-phosphate-containing insecticides get into the mix as well. The insecticide Dursban arrives in the form of cattle insecticide patches. Pharmaceuticals leak from antibiotics in livestock and euthanasia drugs given to pets are also included. Heavy metals accumulate from a variety of sources -- pet ID tags, surgical pins and needles.

Even plastic winds up going into the pit. Unsold supermarket meats, chicken and fish arrive in styrofoam trays and shrink wrap. No one has time for the tedious chore of unwrapping thousands of rejected meat packs. More plastic is added to the pits with the arrival of cattle ID lags, plastic insecticide patches and the green plastic bags containing pets from veterinarians.

Rendering Judgements
Skyrocketing labor costs are one of the economic factors forcing the corporate flesh peddlers to cheat. It is far too costly for plant personnel to cut of flea collars or unwrap spoiled T-bone steaks. Every week millions of packages of plastic-wrapped meat go through the rendering process and become one of the unwanted ingredients in animal feed.

The most environmentally conscious state in the nation is California, where spot checks and testing of animal feed ingredients happen at the wobbly rate of once every (* ....missing words) The supervising state agency is the Department of Agriculture's Feed and Fertilizer Division of Compliance. Their main objective is to test for truth in labeling - does the percentage of protein, phosphorous and calcium match the rendering plant's claims; do the percentages meet state requirements? However, testing for pesticides and other toxins in animal feeds is incomplete.

In California, eight field inspectors regulate a rendering industry that feeds the animals that the state's 30 million people eat. When it comes to rendering plants, however, state and federal agencies have maintained a hands-off policy, allowing the industry to become largely self-regulating. An article in the February 1990 issue of Render, the industry's national magazine, suggests that the self- regulation of certain contamination problems is not working.

One policing program that is already off to a shaky start is the Salmonella Education/Reduction Program, formed under the auspices of the National Renderers Association. The magazine states that "...unless US and Canadian renderers get their heads out of the ground and demonstrate that they are serious about reducing the incidence of salmonella contamination in their animal protein meals, they are going to be faced with ... new and overly stringent government regulations."

So far the voluntary self-testing program is not working. According to the magazine, "..only about 20 percent of the total number of companies producing or blending animal protein meal have signed up for the program.. " Far fewer have done the actual testing.

The American Journal of Veterinary Research conducted an investigation into the persistence of sodium phenobarbital in the carcasses of euthanized animals at a typical rendering plant in 1985 and found "virtually no degradation of the drug occurred during this conventional rendering process ... the potential of other chemical contaminants (e.g. heavy metals, pesticides, and environmental toxicants, which may cause massive herd moralities) to degrade during conventional rendering needs further evaluation."

Renderers are the silent partners in our food chain. But worried insiders are beginning to talk and one word that continues to come up in conversation is "pesticides." The possibility of petrochemically poisoning our food has become a reality. Government agencies and the industry itself are allowing toxins to be inadvertently recycled from the streets and supermarket shelves into the food chain. As we break into a new decade of increasingly complex pollution problems, we must rethink our place in the environment. Since we are no longer hunters, we are becoming the victims of our technologicaly altered food chain.

2003
August 15. Black kills White female, dumps body smeared with peanut butter for the rats, black panics and jumps in river. I saw photos of both verifying races.

Police: Pregnant Woman's Murder Solved
Aug 15, 2003 3:14 pm US/Eastern

PHILADELPHIA (AP) A pregnant woman whose peanut butter-covered body was found in a city lot was killed in a drug-related dispute by a man who later became distraught and committed suicide by jumping into the Schuylkill River, police said.

The naked body of Susan Brennan, 32,(photo here: http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/news/081503_nw_brennanmurder.html )

was found strangled, her hands and feet bound by electrical wire and a rope around her neck, in an isolated lot in southwest Philadelphia on Monday. She had last been seen Sunday morning by the father of her children, with whom she had been staying in Northeast Philadelphia. Investigators said she told her family that she was going shopping.

Police already had ruled out Brennan's current partner and her estranged husband as suspects when they got a tip that Linwood Burley, 35, was connected to the woman's death. His body was found in the Schuylkill River on Thursday morning.

Authorities subsequently conducted interviews with Burley's family and later found a note in his sister's home in which he admitted to the killing. "He left a note saying he was sorry for what he did," Philadelphia Police Capt. Richard Ross said. Investigators also found a pillow case that matched a sheet from the crime scene.

Authorities believe Burley may have covered the body with peanut butter in order to attract rodents, so as to get the body to decompose more quickly. Burley jumped into the Schuylkill on Tuesday when he was riding over the Market Street bridge in a car with a relative.

"At some point he asked him to stop the car," Ross said. "They stopped the vehicle and he just got out and jumped in the river."

Police say Burley drowned to death.

Brennan, who was from Burlington County, N.J., had an addiction problem and frequently went to Philadelphia looking for crack cocaine, police said. She was about seven-months pregnant with her third child and had been separated from her husband for some time. Police said the death investigation is now closed.

2002
November 12. Dad of Slain Bullfighter Asks: "Where's His Heart?"

"The body of a Spanish bullfighter murdered in Peru was missing his eyes, brain and heart and was stuffed with sawdust and pages from a telephone directory before being sent home."

Original Source:
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20021113_254.html
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2002
November 11. Brain maggots.
Original Source:
http://www.ogrish.com/
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2002
November 7. Vodka, fried chicken and his mother's corpse

"Lourens Geyer gave his ex-girlfriend some Smirnoff Ice to drink to "cool down", only metres from his mother's mutilated, naked corpse."

Original Source:
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=13&art_id=vn20021107052226607C796179&set_id=1
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2002
November 4. Chefs say human thigh bones add extra taste to dishes

"Some Ecuadorian chefs use human thigh bones to add extra taste to their dishes and attract customers, according to an investigation by a local newspaper."

Original Source:
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_702496.html?menu=news.latestheadlines
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2002
November 3. Human flesh 'on sale in London.' Police probe link between African magic and butchered remains of 5-year-old boy
Original Source:
http://observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4538419,00.html
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2002
October 18. Dismemberment Case

Original Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Body-Parts.html
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2002
October 18. Halloween Suicide

Original Source:
http://www.indystar.com/article.php?ndeath18.html
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2002
October 18. The Snowtown Murders

Original Source:
http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,5309020^2682,00.html
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2002
October 17. Wife bites husband to death

Original Source:
http://www.modbee.com/local/story/4828184p-5841435c.html
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2002
October 17. Broke dealer cut up woman, fed her to lions

Original Source:
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=13&art_id=qw1034827920452C160&set_id=1
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2002
October 16. True love is... a his-and-hers sex change

Original Source:
http://www.worldonline.co.za/news/news_center_021016.537330.html
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2002
October 10. Set girlfriend on fire

Original Source:
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_np=0&u_pg=36&u_sid=529028
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2002
September 9. Epileptic fined for contorted face

Original Source:
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml;$sessionid$LILGEY14UOT1HQFIQMFCFF4AVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2002/09/09/nepil09.xml&site=5
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2002
July 28. South African Man Disembowels Woman Via Anus
Original Source:
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=13&art_id=qw1027880101329B265&set_id=1
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2002
July 27. Girl Gives Birth to 37 Pound Cyst
Updated: 4:15 p.m. EDT July 27, 2002

An Indiana teen who appeared pregnant got quite a surprise when she learned that she instead had a 37-pound cyst on her ovaries, according to Local 6 News.

Several doctors told Mona Lisa Howell, 14, that she wasn't pregnant, but was obese and needed to diet. However, another doctor believed that her condition might be attributed to something else, so he performed an ultra sound and a cat scan. The tests revealed the girl had a cyst on her ovaries that was the size of a beach ball, weighing 37 pounds. Doctors at Riley Hospital surgically removed the giant cyst. The family was relieved that Mona Lisa wasn't pregnant, did not have cancer and is now on the road to recovery. The girl's doctor says the cyst was probably growing inside her for at least a year.

Copyright 2002 by Local6.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Original Source:
http://www.local6.com/orlpn/news/stories/news-158033720020727-110712.html
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2002
July 26. Attempted Murder By Penis Biting
Original Source: http://www.nj.com/news/expresstimes/pa/index.ssf?/base/news-1/1027674602105320.xml
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2002
July 26. Police Chase Ends When Suspect's Prosthetic Leg Falls Off
Original Source: http://www.activedayton.com/ddn/local/0726pursuit.html
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2002
July 25. Family Buried Son In Yard Because Of High Funeral Costs

What's "sick" is that some people think this is sick. We should ALL want to be buried and want our loved ones buried close to home
Original Source: http://www.local6.com/orlpn/news/stories/news-157763020020725-140710.html
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2002
June 7. Rapper on PCP Rips Lungs Out of Woman, Eats Them
Original Source: http://www.bet.com/articles/0,,c3gb2980-3641,00.html
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