Breaking the ‘Byproduct’ Bias: Rethinking Rendered Ingredients in Pet Food - Barking Mad

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Breaking the ‘Byproduct’ Bias: Rethinking Rendered Ingredients in Pet Food

Episode 80 • 18th March 2026 • Barking Mad • BSM Partners

00:12

Dr. Stephanie Clark

We've all found ourselves standing in the pet food aisle, reading ingredient labels on the bag after bag, and seeing words like chicken meal and beef byproduct. If you're anything like us, you've probably wondered what these terms actually mean and what in the world is in your pet's food.

00:31

Jordan Tyler

Many of these ingredients actually come from a rendering, a process that's been used for a long time. Even though it's so prevalent in pet food and even human food, there are quite a few misconceptions about rendering, especially around the quality and sustainability of ingredients produced through rendering.

00:50

Dr. Stephanie Clark

Today, we're going to the facility. We're diving into what rendering really is, why it's so misunderstood, and how it actually helps turn what would otherwise be wasted food into safe, nutritious ingredients that feed our pets every single day.

01:07

Jordan Tyler

Get ready to tackle some myths, uncover the science, and explore how rendering and rendered ingredients play a crucial role in pet nutrition and sustainability, hearing from several industry experts along the way.

01:20

Dr. Stephanie Clark

Because once you understand the science behind it, rendering starts to look a lot less mysterious and a lot more like one of the most practical solutions we have for reducing food waste. Welcome to Barking Mad, a podcast by BSM Partners. We're your hosts, Dr. Stephanie Clark—

01:39

Jordan Tyler

—and I'm Jordan Tyler.

01:41

Jordan Tyler

What is rendering? The word. Let's start with the word. Right? I'm an English nerd. I'm going to make you all suffer. But the word actually comes from the French verb. Rendre? Emilie Mesnier, if you're listening to this out there, please don't judge me. But it's basically render. Render. Rendre. Rendre. Anyway, it's a French word and it's a verb and it means, “to give back.” So essentially, thinking about rendering, we can think of it as the act of processing and cooking undesired or uneaten food products—so, like parts of animals that we ourselves don't eat, but that are still perfectly delicious and nutritious—and using that to give back. Right? Giving back to our animals in the form of really quality nutrition that's going to let them live their very best lives.

02:31

Jordan Tyler

So to take us deeper into what rendering actually is, don't worry, we have a tried-and-true expert for you today. I'm pleased to welcome Dr. Charles Starkey. He's the Vice President of Scientific and Regulatory Affairs for the North American Renders Association, or NARA, and the Director of Research for the Fats and Proteins Research Foundation, which is the rendering industry's research organization.

02:59

Dr. Charles Starkey

We basically take materials that we choose not to consume and reprocess those and make them usable for other purposes. So, we feel we are the original recyclers.

03:13

Jordan Tyler

According to Lara Moody, Executive Director of the Institute for Feed Education and Research (also called IFEEDER), rendering is a process of both physical and chemical transformation using a variety of equipment and processes. All rendering processes involve the application of heat, the extraction of moisture, and the separation of fat.

03:34

Lara Moody

When people hear rendered, they often picture something they don't want to eat. And in reality, rendering is a transformation process. It's how we capture high value nutrition, including proteins, fats, and minerals from animal parts and things that people don't generally eat.

03:53

Dr. Stephanie Clark

But you'd be surprised to know rendering hits closer to home than you think. Take it from Abbey Thiel, a PhD food scientist, author, and YouTuber who sees rendering as a vital part of the food industry.

04:09

Abbey Thiel

Rendering is like when your parents cook and clean up for you, like there's a lot you don't realize as a kid, like how much work goes into, you know, prepping food, cutting food, then you cook it, something in the microwave, something in the oven. And then as a kid, you're just given a plate and you're like, “Yummy, yummy, yummy!” Then you're gone. Then mom and dad come back, they take your plate, clean it up, wash it, wash the counter, start the dishwasher, scrub the pans. And I feel like that's what rendering sort of is. Like, consumers don't know what [or] where these rendered ingredients are or where they come from.

04:46

Jordan Tyler

And Abbey makes a really great point here in that not only are rendered ingredients utilized in pet food as a great source of nutrition, but the human world, you know, our food that we eat also leverages rendering.

05:00

Abbey Thiel

People probably do eat, rendered ingredients. They just don't know it or maybe think that, you know, it doesn't come from rendering. But for example, like any type of animal fat, like if you use, like, lard or tallow in baking and cooking, that is actually a rendered ingredient. Maybe you just didn't know how it was made, say. But there's a lot of actually, like, ingredients that would be used in supplements that come from rendering. So, if you want to get, like, collagen or collagen peptides, which I looked at the store like a thing of collagen peptides is super expensive, that can come from rendering. Gelatin, this is used in gummies or even gummy vitamins, other supplements. It's used in medicines if you have the jelly pills that you swallow. Gelatin is an ingredient we get from rendering.

05:55

Jordan Tyler

Yeah. Abbey shares some really great examples of all sorts of things that use products from the rendering industry that we would never guess. So, gelatin, that was a great example. It's used in gummy vitamins. It's used in soft gel capsules. You know, like when you take, like, a Tylenol or an ibuprofen, it comes in a soft gel—that has gelatin in it. Gummy candy, that's got gelatin in it. It's so good, but it's got gelatin in it. So, if you think that's gross, might want to rethink your candy habits. But another thing I thought was really interesting, and Stephanie, I'll let you speak to this because you were the one that brought it up initially, is the whole beef tallow thing.

06:35

Jordan Tyler

I didn't know that McDonald's fries were cooked in beef tallow until all the way up until the 90s when everybody decided to go on a crusade against saturated fats, which, not saying that's a bad thing, but, like, those famous fries, iconic fries, mind you, were cooked in beef tallow until the 90s, and you probably loved them unless you were born after the 90s.

06:58

Dr. Stephanie Clark

I'm going to listen to this and think that I have, like, some vanity, like, complex between the red light [therapy] and the beef tallow, but maybe it's just my social media, like, is telling me, “Hey. You're getting older. Here are some helpful ways to age gracefully.” But let's talk about beef tallow, a rendered product, a rendered fat. Really, let's just call what it is, fat. And people are paying beaucoup bucks to lather this on their face. I don't do that yet. Honestly, I can't get past the fact of paying, like, $80 for a jar of fat. Like, I'm trying to lose a couple pounds. I'm not going to pay for it. But supposedly it's very nourishing and voluptuous for the skin, popping out all those wrinkles, but that is essentially a rendered product.

07:44

Jordan Tyler

So you wouldn't have that skin cream if it wasn't for rendering. But I didn't know either that tallow, so animal fat, is also added to some fabric softeners to really, like, increase the softness. And then another thing is crayons get their texture and their smell from stearic acid, and that also comes from rendered beef fat. And then just to take it one step further, another product of rendering is like intestines. So animals' intestines are processed, and some of those actually go to the medical industry and are used as surgical stitches. Because, I don't know if you have taken a pet to the vet and had them get stitches recently, when we fixed Lenny, he got absorbable stitches so we didn't have to go back and get them taken out. His body just absorbed them once the wound didn't need to be sewn up anymore.

08:40

Jordan Tyler

And so they use intestines for that because they're really sturdy and they're also absorbable and your body will just absorb the protein from that organ and then it's all said and done. Just crazy. I had no idea that all these different things touched the rendering industry in some way. So, just to kind of wrap this up in a pretty little bow. Right? If we trust rendered products or rendered ingredients to keep our faces moisturized, to keep our candies gummy and our stitches sutured, why wouldn't we trust them to provide safe and nutrient-dense protein and food for our pets?

09:21

Dr. Stephanie Clark

Now that we understand just how widespread rendered products are in our lives and our pets, let's hear more about the process from Dr. Starkey.

09:33

Dr. Charles Starkey

Rendering is basically dehydration. You're forcing the water out of the product, and that's where the clean water that we get comes from. Seventy percent of our raw materials are water. We remove most of that. We leave a little bit in, and we clean that and put that back in the environment.

09:52

Jordan Tyler

So essentially, things like the way that we tend to consume meat, you know, the way that we harvest meat. Social norms, right? When was the last time you saw your co-worker in the break room for lunch and they were eating a chicken liver? You know, like, it's just not that common. And on top of that, regulations in North America also dictate many organ meats and other animal byproducts aren't harvested for human food. So, it comes back to our personal preferences as well as the regulations that we have in place in the U.S.

10:25

Abbey Thiel

According to like an American or by American standards, if you took, you know, a cow or a pig, usually only 50% of it is edible. The rest, you know, it would vary by country, but to an American, probably 50% goes into being rendered.

10:43

Dr. Charles Starkey

Even in the EU, which we would consider fairly similar to our culture, they eat to this day a lot more organ meat than we do. It's on their menus at restaurants, it's in their grocery stores. We have simply chosen not to consume it. That's something a lot of people forget. There's nothing wrong with liver and kidney and spleen and some other things. It's just we don't like the taste of it. So, we're making a choice in that matter. It's not just that we don't eat it because there's something wrong with it. We just choose not to eat it. What's really fortunate about that is dogs and cats love liver and they love these really strong flavored organs. It kind of works out well for our rendering and pet food industry here.

11:31

Audio Compilation

Oh, hey, Rufus. Rufus. Rufus. Rufus. Rufus. We all know Rufus. Everybody loves Rufus. He's a great dog.

11:42

Rufus

Rufus is back, and I just have to say, love me some liver. But who doesn't love that stuff?

11:49

Jordan Tyler

Me and a lot of people, actually, especially in the United States.

11:54

Rufus

Why? It's just meaty goodness. Besides, didn't I see you go to a burger place the other day?

12:00

Jordan Tyler

Well, yes. And there are other countries and cultures that enjoy things like liver and other parts of the animal like tongue and intestine. We just haven't quite developed the palate for it here in the United States.

12:13

Rufus

Tongues, intestines—I'm glad you're saving the good stuff for me then. You humans are so weird to me. Sorry, I mean Americans, I guess.

12:22

Dr. Stephanie Clark

In other words, it's cultural. The United States has a bunch of rendered ingredients because there are so many animal products we simply just don't eat. And if we won't eat them, they'll go to waste unless we find a way to capture their value in a different way. According to NARA, US renderers collect 56 billion—that’s billion with a B!—pounds of raw material a year and recycle them by cooking and drying them into 22 billion pounds of animal fats, oils, and delectable proteins.

12:57

Jordan Tyler

When Dr. Steph says 56 billion pounds of raw materials… 56 billion pounds, that's a lot. But you can think of it as 700,000 fully loaded semi-trucks. That would stretch over 9,000 miles…?

13:13

Dr. Stephanie Clark

So, in case you wanted to know how far this rendered material goes, approximately 31% of rendered proteins and 15% of rendered fats are used as pet food ingredients.

13:25

Jordan Tyler

So rendering is essential for nutrition, our pet's nutrition, absolutely. But it's also a huge benefit to the environment and for public health. So, let's talk a little bit about the environmental benefit first.

13:40

Lara Moody

I think rendered ingredients bring two environmental wins. First, they avoid emissions by diverting materials from landfills and wastewater where they would have gone and had to, you know, they would have generated methane or they would have required some type of additional treatment to go into the landfill. Second, they provide alternatives to ingredients that have higher footprints. So if you're, for example, putting together a diet and you're able to use like rendered poultry meal or tallow, right, you would typically need less newly produced protein or oil to deliver the same nutrition, right? What this means is less waste, we take the pressure off land and water, fewer greenhouse gas emissions from decomposition because it's not going to the landfill.

14:25

Lara Moody

And essentially, when we render or when we upcycle, it allows us to keep nutrients that are coming in the animal space, like, within a supply chain so that we're not leaking those out as waste.

14:38

Dr. Stephanie Clark

million ton into cat food in: 2024

15:08

Jordan Tyler

Also in the show notes, you can find our upcycled episode. So, we did a whole episode on upcycled ingredients. It doesn't talk specifically about rendered ingredients, but it talks about other classes of ingredients that are upcycled or considered circular that are being used in pet food. And it's a really cool episode, so definitely check that out.

15:27

Lara Moody

Circularity itself is about diverting products from the landfill. Instead of circularity, we think about upcycling. So, I tend to think in the pet food space in particular about the upcycling of co-products and by-products. It means the same thing as circularity, which really is diverting materials away from a waste stream. Rendering keeps us from sending those materials to landfills. We can recapture them as high quality inputs, and that allows us just to displace new products or virgin resources.

16:00

Jordan Tyler

Back to the environmental benefits of rendering—one last point, which I didn't know, I thought this was really interesting. The rendering industry reclaims and purifies billions of gallons of water every single year, and it also contributes to cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, right? Because we're converting waste that would put off emissions into valuable resources.

16:22

Dr. Charles Starkey

We put about 4 billion gallons of clean water back into the environment that would be contaminated if we didn't recover that water and clean it up.

16:32

Dr. Stephanie Clark

Let's also not forget about what rendering does for us. Rendering provides tons of well-paid jobs around the world. So, not only are these ingredients benefiting our pets and our face and our gummies, but they're also benefiting our society and our economy. So good job rendering. You just all-around care about everybody.

16:55

Abbey Thiel

People probably don't think of rendering as like a whole industry, but it's huge. Right? There are so many jobs and workers and companies in this industry. They're preventing a ton of greenhouse gas emissions. They're reclaiming a lot of water. They are really this, like, sustainable type of industry that kind of gets I feel like gets like an icky air about it or, when it's like, it's actually very sustainable and saving us in so many ways.

17:27

Dr. Stephanie Clark

Let's debunk some misassumptions, shall we? Because communication about rendering hasn't always been exactly clear or concise or even understandable, consumer perception of safety and quality hasn't always been positive. This is in part because of the pet food industry. It moves towards more humanized formats, like human-grade and fresh. And certain brands in the industry have turned rendering into a really bad, nasty word.

18:01

Abbey Thiel

And it's funny how some of these aspects of food that are very sustainable or upcycling have, like, a really positive… people think about them so positively, but somehow, we have frame rendering to be thought of in a very negative light when it's really, like, it really is sustainable and reusing ingredients, but yet it kind of gets like, you know, it has a very different reputation than other, you know, sustainable practices.

18:32

Jordan Tyler

We talked about this a little bit earlier, but even the pet food industry is to blame when it comes to bashing rendering. So, this is a few years ago, some pet food companies were in their own marketing, demonizing rendered ingredients, calling them “lesser quality” in order to, you know, encourage people to buy their food that didn't include rendered ingredients. But these ads were looked over by the National Advertising Review Board or NARB, which is just a funny acronym.

19:01

Jordan Tyler

And they found that these ads, quote, “misled consumers by implying competitors' products are less nutritious because they include chicken or meat byproduct meals or other ingredients.” So, NARB totally clapped back on pet food companies marketing against rendered ingredients, saying that they're less nutritious or they're lesser quality because it's just not true. They're just different types of ingredients. The industry contributes to negative messaging around rendered ingredients because they're capitalizing on fear, consumer fear of rendered ingredients. And that's a totally misplaced fear that's been manufactured by this marketing.

19:41

Abbey Thiel

Yeah. One thing I wish pet owners knew is that it's not that these rendered ingredients are like mysteries or, you know, like a mystery leftover. Right? They're actually one of the most sustainable and safe and nutrient dense parts of, like, pet food. Right? Because when we they go it goes through the rendering process, which is heavily regulated and, you know, they know exactly what they're doing.

20:06

Dr. Stephanie Clark

We're just busting these myths here. Another misconception: rendered ingredients aren't safe. When actually the rendering industry takes safety incredibly serious.

20:18

Lara Moody

One thing that's important for people to realize is that rendered ingredients receive a lot of high-quality control. Right? We have inspected facilities that they come from. Those products are heat treated to destroy pathogens, and they're tested to meet really tight specifications. And so, let's be clear, pets have no challenge eating these things. It's not like we're giving it to them as a raw untreated form. Like, again, the materials that we're bringing into the pet food ingredient supply, they've been highly tested. They've had the pathogens removed. They've done the work to make sure they're high-quality ingredients that have certain nutritional characteristics within them.

20:59

Rufus

Surrendered pet food ingredients aren't only delicious, they are also safe and tested?

21:07

Dr. Stephanie Clark

Exactly, Rufus. It isn't like we're just blending everything up and scooping it up without making sure it's safe for our pets, especially you. If that were the case, the rendering industry would be long gone by now.

21:21

Rufus

The idea of a big bowl of blended meat sounds delicious, but I'm glad it's safe and nutritious, too. Because I can't remember the last time I threw up on the carpet, and I don't want to.

21:33

Dr. Stephanie Clark

Yeah. Neither do we, Rufus.

21:36

Rufus

Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. So, just how nutritious is the food then?

21:40

Dr. Stephanie Clark

Oh, Rufus. It's almost like you knew where were going to go next.

21:46

Jordan Tyler

Another misconception: Rendered ingredients aren't nutritious for pets because they're processed using high heat. We've talked about it a little bit, but Dr. Starkey says that's a load of malarkey.

22:00

Dr. Charles Starkey

They're very nutritious. We formulate diets with them all the time, both for livestock and pet food. Most of these people want to be conscious of what they do. They want to help the environment. They want to support things. They want to reduce food waste. Use products that do that. I think that's just poor communication on our end and maybe just taking a few more minutes of digging on the consumer's end to really understand where some of these products are coming from and their benefits. Nutrition is important. A chicken meal seems to be preferred by consumers over chicken by-product meal. Well, it's a higher ash compound. There's actually nothing wrong with either one, but if you want higher protein, chicken by-product meal has higher protein more vitamins and minerals because of the organ meat that's included. So, you have to define what you mean by quality.

22:55

Dr. Stephanie Clark

Let's talk about how some consumers have problems with rendered ingredients but seek out human-grade food for their pets, which is much less sustainable. Rendering uses what's left over, but human-grade pet food is in direct competition with what we eat, especially at a time when we're already concerned about meat shortages and greenhouse gas emission with animal farming. Also, also, human grade protein is just as likely to be contaminated with pathogens or recalled for safety concerns. Need I remind you of all the recalls we've seen lately? So, human grade may sound nice, but it doesn't come with any special safety advantages. So, at the end of the day, rendering is recycling. And let's be honest, wasting those nutrients should be a crime. So, let's get them rendered. It's actually disrespectful to people and animals going hungry, and to the animals who gave their lives so that they could be our food.

23:55

Dr. Charles Starkey

I've heard multiple times just over the last month, different individuals kind of disregarding or discounting rendering because of the “ick factor” of it. Well, that's fine if you want to feel that way, but what really should make us sick is we have a really large population of hungry people in this country and we've got 60 million tons to 70 million tons of food waste and loss. Rendering alone picks up 30 million tons of that. If we really look at what we're doing and you really want to be sustainable, we're doing one of the better things we can for the environment and to reuse and revitalize these products and to reduce food waste and make use of something that we don't have the landfill space to handle.

24:48

Lara Moody

I heard somebody the other day use the term “rescuing nutrition” when they were talking about rendered products, and I thought that was an interesting term. Right? So rendering has the ability to, like, rescue nutrition and keep it in a supply chain. When you see rendered ingredient on a label, like you should read it as, “Hey, this brand is doing something to deliver complete nutrition and reducing unnecessary waste. My pet gets the complete nutrition it needs, but it's also helping to reduce waste from the food supply chain.” All of us that work in the feed industry, we all have pets. We all have our own animals. We aren't feeding things that we consider bad to our animals, and we aren't feeding things that you consider bad to your animals.

25:31

Jordan Tyler

We have explored the science, the history, and many surprising ways rendering is to thank for our daily spoils, be it our pet's food, our skin cream, or just some dang soft gel Tylenol on a hard day. Am I right?

25:48

Dr. Stephanie Clark

Agreed, Jordan. But that was a lot of information. Let's recap. Rendering is a way of giving back. Despite sometimes giving a bad rap, it plays a crucial, critical role in making pet food safe, nutritious, and sustainable.

26:05

Jordan Tyler

In a world where overconsumption has landfills piled high, it's important we recognize the value of sustainable processes like rendering and the many wellness-oriented products that it fuels.

26:17

Dr. Stephanie Clark

If we want a sustainable food system for humans and pets alike, we have to accept a more circular approach (like a circle!), and today's episode has shown that rendering doesn't just dispose of materials, it up cycles, it rejuvenates them. By trusting the science of rendering. We're supporting a circular economy that keeps billions of pounds of waste out of landfills every single year.

26:44

Jordan Tyler

It is a lot of waste. So, here's your takeaway. Next time you're reading a pet food label and you see the words “meal,” “byproduct,” “animal fat,” “tallow,” take a moment to remember the bigger picture here. Those ingredients might seem mysterious, and maybe you've heard other brands talk about how they're not as good of quality. But in reality, they're actually part of a well-established process that creates safe, sustainable nutrition for our pets.

27:53

Dr. Stephanie Clark

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Barking Mad. If you want to learn more about BSM Partners, please visit us at www.bsmpartners.net. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite leading podcast platform or share it with a friend to stay current on the latest pet industry trends and conversations.

27:36

Jordan Tyler

A huge thank you to Dr. Charles Starkey, Lara Moody, and Dr. Abbey Thiel for sharing their time and insights with us today. We'd also like to thank our dedicated team: Ada-Miette Thomas, Neeley Bowden, Kait Wright, Cady Wolf, Anna Guilfoyle, and Jacob Parker. A special shout out to Lee Ann Hagerty and Michael Johnson in support of this episode, and to David Perez for our original music in the intro and outro. See you next time!