There's a Heifer in Your Tank

What is the most unusual animal byproduct?

 

By Holly Stemberger, Kate Smith, Derrik Voogd, Shawn Tremblay and Woody Phung

 

How many products are derived from pigs?

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By Gwen Roy, Chelsey Burdess, Darcy Bemister and Andy Kiely

Is an offal awful?

 

Would you be surprised to find that every day great quantities of tasty, nutritious foodstuffs suitable for human consumption are rendered and used in pet foods or for other low value products? That is exactly what happens to a great deal of the offal that Canada produces. Despite its name, offal is quite the opposite. Unfortunately due to a combination of preconceived ideas about its taste and texture, a lack of North American cultural exposure and consumers with limited knowledge of how to prepare it, offal has not managed to achieve the human consumption market that it could. Such a market would be a benefit to consumers looking for economical, healthy protein sources, as well as to producers and processors who presently end up getting little profit from the sale of offal. Consumer Arinna Grittani illustrates a popular misconception that the industry will have to disprove in order to change the image of offal, “If offal tasted better, I’d definitely eat it more, but I really don’t like the taste.” When quizzed further, Grittani admits that she has only sampled limited kinds of offal, and the taste among those has varied greatly.

Currently Mexico and Asia are the strongest markets for Canadian offal. The Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) crisis that struck the Canadian Beef industry had devastating consequences in the export of beef offal. Not only did huge markets such as the United States put a complete halt to imports of Canadian beef, Japan, a lucrative market for offal, also denied continued imports of Canadian offal. Beef exports to Japan remain closed, and while exports to the U.S. have resumed, the handling and export of offal has had certain restrictions placed on it. Specified Risk Materials (SRMs) must be removed from the carcass at the time of slaughter and disposed of. SRMs include the brain, eyes, tonsils, spinal cord and a portion of the small intestine that used to be commonly consumed in Eastern Europe. Not only does this mean certain types of offal are lost for export, there is also the added cost of the removal of the SRMs.

While North American consumption of offal has never been great, before BSE broke out internationally, offal was commonly consumed in Europe and Asia. The Europeans first started to eat offal out of necessity, which is why offal is also known as “poor food.” Over time offal became a common ingredient in a lot of European and Asian dishes, often being consumed as a delicacy. Edmonton Journal food columnist Judy Schultz comments on this evolution: “It is interesting to see how offal has moved up the food chain, from food for the poor, to being consumed, in some cases, by the very rich.” Fatty duck liver is used to make foie gras, while the thymus or pancreas of an animal can be used to make sweetbread. Tripe is a common component of Vietnamese pho noodles. Although offal is rooted in European and Asian cultures, spread of the popularity has been slow to reach most North Americans. The market of offal has been dampened by the outbreak of diseases, such as BSE and Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD), but the main reason for the lack of human consumption is that North Americans do not know enough about offal, its uses and nutritional benefits.

Offal products are awfully healthy and nutritional. Offal dishes contain numerous essential dietary elements necessary for optimal health. Some offal is high in iron which is required for red blood cells to deliver oxygen throughout your body; iron is a great source of zinc which is important for growth, tissue repair and a properly functioning reproductive system. Offal also contains important B vitamins, especially Vitamin B12 – critical for the production and function of red blood cells and an efficient nervous system. The mineral selenium is found in offal and works together with antioxidant enzymes. Since offal is often organ meats, it contains a significant amount of protein that is essential for growth, repair and energy. In general, offal is a well balanced food that can be a great addition to a meal.

Likely the most common type of offal that people consume is liver. If prepared well, this is a delicious and nutritious treat. Liver is particularly high in Vitamin A, which is essential for healthy vision and aids in protein digestion. Liver is also high in Folate and in Vitamin D – necessary for strong bones and teeth.

If North Americans were aware that offal is commonly consumed in other cultures, and that it is an excellent nutrient source, would they be more receptive to regular consumption of heart, liver, tongue and other types of offal? The possibility for livestock producers to capitalize on the growing trends of both ethnic dining, and health consciousness, means that perhaps the future will see a thriving North American market for the human consumption of offal.

Ethnic markets, specialty grocery stores and farmer’s markets are all excellent sources for offal – either prepared or ready for you to take home and cook. Cultural cookbooks and the internet are both great places to find easy to use, nutritious recipes, so you can begin a lifetime of enjoying offal.

- Amy Messner, Kurt Preugschas and Dorcas Tang

Lippy animals

Are your lips getting dry and cracked from the cold, dry winter?
Maybe you should buy a sheep...It turns out animals can do more for your body then you think.

 

Recently we decided to do a research project on the animal byproducts that are found in lip gloss. We found that not everything in that lip gloss bottle of yours is synthetic. Numerous materials produced by animals such as caprylic acid, stearic acid, allantoin, and lanolin are regular products in everyday lip gloss. It turns our many farm animals end up making people look and/or feel better.

Despite goats reputation as trouble-makers, we’ve found that they can actually be very helpful in the healing and maintenance of human skin. A component of goat’s milk called caprylic acid is actually a common product in certain types of lip gloss and lip moisturizers. It has a very low pH which helps to maintain the mildly acidic outer layer of the skin which is produced naturally by healthy skin. Fortunately this layer functions as a barrier against bacteria. A key quality of caprylic acid it is quickly and easily absorbed by the skin providing the lips with essential proteins and minerals needed to stay healthy and soft.

Normally people wouldn’t want pig fat on their lips; however, stearic acid, a component of pig fat, is an ingredient of lip gloss. It is a white wax-like substance with an incredible affinity for water. Dr. Randall Weselake, Professor and Canada Research Chair, is an agricultural lipid biotechnologist at the University of Alberta. He says “stearic acid has water loving and fearing components. It has a carboxyl end which brings water to the lips and a long carbon chain end which repels water”. Its desire to attain water only assists in the maintenance of smooth, moist lips. When applied to lips, it provides texture and thickness making ones lips look voluptuous and irresistible.

How would you like to be kissed by someone with cow urine on their lips? Well, this may have taken place without you knowing. Allantoin, a component of cow urine is a common ingredient in lip gloss.

After a cow urinates, allantoin can be synthetically derived from the uric acid present in the urine. It works by rapidly producing healthy cells by depositing proteins directly on the dry, undesirable skin. Allantoin works excellently for wounds and sunburns, and heals, soothes and moisturizes chapped lips.

 

We found that one of the more commonly known cures for chapped lips is lanolin. Although most people have a basic understanding of lanolin’s importance and reoccurrence in cosmetics many would be shocked to discover its origin. Lanolin is a waste product in the wool processing industry and is universally known as wool fat, wool grease, or wool wax. This thick oily, yellow substance is a mixture of esters and cholesterols of several fatty acids and is secreted by a sheep’s sebaceous glands in the form of sebum. Lanolin is a product of the sebum, an oily substance that is composed of lipids and debris of dead lipid-producing cells. Sebaceous glands are found in the skin of mammals, more specifically in sheep’s skin, and it works in combination with the hair follicles to carry sebum to the skins surface. A sheep produces lanolin to help waterproof and protect its wool and skin from becoming dry, brittle and cracked.

We found answers to questions reader’s had no idea they even had. Waste products of animals are not always exactly waste products. They can be put to use in items such as lip gloss. On the basis of personal interest our research has succeeded in providing you with the knowledge that will last a lifetime.

-Marla Bohm, Robin Derfler and Joel Lamont

Theese boots are made for walkin'

 

What’s the hardest working part of any cowboy? His boots! Whether he’s outside wrangling steers in the pasture or mucking out stalls in the barn, his boots go wherever he does. Many cowhides are used to provide those rowdy cowboys with hardy boots. The question remains: how many cowboy boots can be made from one cow, and how are they made? First the hide must be removed from the cow carcass at the slaughterhouse. A hide is split into two sides; each is measured from the belly to the back of the cow. The hide is cured in a brine or salt solution for approximately 16 hours. It is soaked in clean water and the hair is removed in a process called scudding. The dehaired hide is then degreased, desalted and soaked in water. The whole process takes about 50 hours.

Finally, the hide is tanned. There are two processes that may be used when tanning. Vegetable tanning is the traditional method where hides are stretched on frames and immersed for several weeks in vats of increasing concentrations of tannin. Tannin is a plant compound that occurs naturally in bark and is useful because it binds and removes the leftover animal proteins found on the hides. In today’s fast-paced industry, where time is money, a more efficient tanning process is needed. Mineral tanning, or “wet-blue” tanning takes less then a day. This method uses chromium salts which cause the leather to turn blue in the raw state and produces stretchable leather that is often used in lighter weight cattle hides.

In the finishing stage the hide is split, shaved, dyed and embossed, depending on the purpose of the leather. The leather used in cowboy boots is either full-grain leather or top-grain leather. Full-grain leather is left unchanged after processing and is leather in its natural form. Topgrain leather has a layer of the natural grain sanded off and an artificial grain applied to it.

Boot manufacturers then use the assembly system to punch out the different boot pieces from the hide and assemble the boot. Glen Bird of Cargill Foods Alberta recently toured Red Wing boot factory and describes the assembly line process: “First, there is a punch used to cut out the different patterns of the boot. They cut out the toe, heel, tongue, sides, and finger loops to pull your boot on. Then the pieces get passed on to the next station.”

According to the Alberta Boot Company, (Alberta’s only manufacturer of cowboy boots), this process involves over 200 steps performed by skilled employees. If Alberta Boot can manufacture 10 000 pairs of boots yearly and 40 pairs per day, then how many boots can they make from one cowhide?

We know that the surface area of cowhides varies depending on the breed, size and age of a cow. The rough surface area of a hide is 3.8m². By calculating the surface area of each piece of leather used in the boot, the total amount of leather used can be found, which is, on average, 0.3m². Thus, 11 cowboy boots per cow can be made. That’s enough to outfit five cowboys as well as another cowboy who enjoys wearing only one boot.

Some boots are made entirely of leather, including lining, pull straps, side panels and soles. Other boots are made partially of synthetic materials such as vinyl. If boots were made specifically for children or Shaquille O’ Neill (with size 22 feet), the area of leather required for these boots would vary dramatically. The Alberta Boot Company may use up to eight cowhides per day or almost 2000 cowhides per year.

Boot making can be quite a profitable business – custom boots can take two to three weeks to make, and can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. Diablo Boots of Edmonton, Alberta can sell approximately 100 pairs per week, bringing in revenue of about 15 thousand dollars per week during the busy summer season. Costs all depend on the type of leather, embossing, and those other extra details. While many cow folk prefer the standard cowhide, there are the occasional eccentrics out there that want boots made out of python, lizard, shark, stingray, kangaroo,or even ostrich.

Cowboy boots aren’t just for cowboys and cowgals anymore: there are millions of boot fans out there. Boots are just as much a fashion statement as a work shoe. And when the entire process from farm to foot takes over 300 steps, cowboy boots can cost a small fortune. Boots that good must be made for walkin’.

 
- Jennifer Cave, Chantel Brust, David Law and Dawn Trautman

How long before we are buried in waste?

Finding alternative uses for meat and bone meal

 

Have you ever wondered how your world would be if you were swimming in a sea of ground meat and bones? Without changes to the way we prioritize the meat and bone meal industry, it may become a reality. Around the globe, a massive amount of nutrient rich meat and bone meal is produced but is not being used to its full potential.

Meat and bone meal consists mainly of the inedible parts of an animal carcass. Everything that cannot be used for human consumption is made into meat and bone meal, except for what are called “specified risk materials” (SRM). Before BSE became an issue, every inedible part including SRM was included in meat and bone meal. There are different classes of meat and bone meal including blood meal, bone meal, meat meal and meat and bone meal (MBM).

Up until recently, the common practice was to feed complete MBM to cattle, pigs and chickens because it is an excellent source of protein and calcium. MBM is no longer an option as a feed supplement because of BSE (mad cow disease).

 

Since specified risk materials are now banned in MBM, producers can still feed it to pigs and chickens because their digestive system differs from cattle. Some producers do not feed MBM so they can claim that their animals are “all vegetable grain fed”.

In Europe, meat meal is banned for all use, which is a problem since they produce it faster than they can incinerate it. They currently have a backlog of 1 million tonnes that is increasing by the minute. According to Curt Hart, the Production Manager of Cargill Foods in High River, Alberta, Canada produces approximately 150,000 tonnes of bovine MBM on a yearly basis. On an annual basis, according to David Johnston in Corporate Development of Sanimax Corporation in Montreal, Quebec, the United States produces enough raw materials to fill a convoy of semi-trailers, four lanes wide, from New York to Los Angeles.

 

Some existing alternatives take advantage of the mass of MBM produced and its valuable nutrient content. Biodegradable fire-fighting foam made from blood meal is currently in production at the University of Alberta. Bags of meat meal in porous cloth can be hung on plants to protect them from deer and other wildlife.

David Johnson suggests the use of MBM as an alternative fuel source in the concrete industry to heat kilns as well as using it for fillers in concrete and composite wood products.

Biopolymers made from the protein in MBM can be used to make biodegradable plastics. The plastic can make products such as drug capsules and sausage casings. Dog, cat and fish foods include MBM since it is high in various nutrients. MBM can be used as a fertilizer for gardens, according to Curt Hart.

We need new economical alternative uses for meat and bone meal before we end up with a massive backlog and wasted resources, eventually being buried in an expensive waste.

- Shon Lowry, Diana Edwards, Katrina Soetart and Renee DeWindt

Manure: solutution or poo-lution?

 
Manure: dirty, smelly, polluting nuisance. Right? Wrong! Manure, in fact, has played a significant role in sustaining life for centuries. First Nations peoples and, later, settlers utilized dried buffalo dung (a.k.a. meadow muffins) as a source of fuel for cooking and heating due to the scarcity of trees on the Canadian prairies. Today, manure is widely employed as a fertilizer by farmers and gardeners worldwide. Unfortunately, due to increased herd sizes resulting from modern intensive livestock production methods, the supply of manure is rapidly outpacing demand. An excess of animal waste poses a significant threat to the long-term environmental sustainability of animal agriculture in Alberta, primarily in the form of surface and groundwater contamination .

This threat can be addressed through a synthesis of traditional practices and modern technology; a biodigester is a perfect example of such a synthesis. In a biodigester, manure is broken down by anaerobic digestion which causes a combination of gases, known as biogas, to be produced . This biogas can then be used as a source of fuel, to produce both heat and electricity. In addition, the material that remains following digestion can be used as fertilizer. Just as meadow muffins were a source of renewable energy for settlers and First Nations peoples, animal waste produced in intensive operations like feedlots can provide the fuel for a modern method of sustainable energy production, and on a much larger scale.

However, this technology has been slow to catch on. Investors have been reluctant to get onboard, despite a 2006 9-Point Bioenergy funding plan passed by the Alberta government to encourage sustainable energy development . According to Mike Kotelko (VP Highland Feeders), sophisticated technology and expertise is required in the construction of biodigesters and, therefore, initial capital and subsequent operating costs can be prohibitively high. Kotelko maintains that in order for biodigesters to be economically viable they must be of a sufficiently large scale to offset operating costs and, in addition, they should be integrated on-site with complementary processes (such as ethanol production) that allow the byproducts of one process to be used in the other. Highland Feeders successfully operates an integrated biodigester, providing proof that this technology is economically feasible.

Biodigesters, then, represent a sustainable solution to two problems: finding a source of environmentally friendly, renewable energy, and what to do with all that poo!

- Christa Hostettler, Mark Smith, Jenn Stellbrink, Jacob Boychuck, Jordan Burke, Rachel Myers and Erika Strande

 

Can you heat your house with milk?

 

by Ryan Davidson, Jacob Onyschuk, Mark Phoa, Jason Schonknecht and Kayla Spitzer

What animal products can be used to build a house?

 

by Cole Cameron, Kelley Reynolds, Jennifer Potter, Brianne Bergerud, Cory Neumann, and Chantelle Birchall

What animal products can be used to clean the environment?

 

by Caitlin McFarlane, Erin Loogman, Kylie Pon, Michelle Fournier, Steph Nguyen and Tyler Schmitt