A cattle byproduct is something utilized or made from an animal besides meat or milk. A 1,150-lb. market steer yields approximately 500 pounds of beef—the dressed carcass is roughly 44 percent or more of live weight—but almost all of the remaining parts can be utilized. These byproducts’ value are about 10 percent of the value of the live animal and the tallow (fat) is about 20 percent of the live value.
Parts of the animal not used as meat are often listed as edible, inedible or medicinal. Edible beef byproducts include variety meats such as liver, kidneys, tripe, sweetbreads, tongue and brains—though in recent years, brain tissue has not been consumed because of the possibility it may contain the prion that causes bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
Other important edible byproducts include fat, which has an important role as oleo stock and oleo oil for margarine and shortening. Oleo stearin is an ingredient in chewing gum and certain candies. Gelatin from bones, connective tissues and skin is utilized in marshmallows, ice cream, canned meats, and gelatin desserts.
When eating Jello, you are eating an animal byproduct. Other products that might contain gelatin include gum and fruit snacks like gummy bears. Intestinal membranes provide edible sausage casings.
Dr. Dan Hale, professor and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension meat specialist, likes to take his students to grocery stores and tell them to find cattle products. Every aisle at any grocery store will contain products from livestock and the pharmacy is full of cattle byproducts.
Items like vitamin B12, vitamin B6, vitamin A, vitamin K, iron, zinc and other dietary supplements contain products from cattle and other livestock. Hale says livestock are very important to human medicine; in many countries, it takes 26 cattle pancreases to keep a diabetic person alive for a year.
Biomedical research also uses many cattle byproducts. Fetal calf serum has been utilized to produce antibodies for people who have a specific disease or virus. Certain compounds from livestock can supply human bodies with vital substances that some people don’t produce on their own, and these byproducts keep those people alive.
Hale points out that you cannot get these benefits from anything produced in a lab as “meat.” The only use for fake meat is food. Scientists can produce a myoblast precursor to a muscle cell and make something that looks like meat if it’s put on a framework to build a steak or hamburger, but animals do a better job because they have the whole system. Plus, at the same time, they produce hundreds of other good things that humans use every day.
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Albumin is the major protein in blood. It can be removed from the blood from slaughtered cattle and used in food products or certain medicines or for laboratory research. Blood can also be dried into “blood meal” that can be used as a nitrogen-rich fertilizer.
Strong outer layers of cattle intestines are used as instrument strings and racket strings. Hooves and horns contain keratin, a protein commonly used in human hair care products. Hooves, horns, skin, meat and bones (any part of the carcass not being utilized directly as food) can be rendered in a heating process to remove fats, and these fats are used in pet foods.
After bone is rendered, leftover solids are ground into bone meal, which can also be used in pet foods. Other livestock parts are often included in pet foods and the rawhide bones that dogs chew on are made from animal hides.
Everyday uses
Most people use items containing inedible beef byproducts every day. Everyone knows the hide is used for leather. There are hundreds of leather products people take for granted besides the obvious belts, shoes, leather jackets, gloves, hiking boots, saddles, etc. Footballs—in the past called “pigskins”—are generally made from cattle hide.
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Lesser-known uses for hide include materials used in felt and other textiles. Some ingredients from hides provide a base for ointments, binding agents for plaster and asphalt, and a base for insulation material in buildings. The “camel hair” artists’ brushes are made from fine hair in the ears and tails of cattle.
Industrial oils and lubricants, tallow for tanning, soaps, lipsticks, face and hand creams, certain medicines, and ingredients for explosives are produced from inedible fats from cattle. Fatty acids from cattle are used in production of many chemicals, biodegradable detergents, pesticides, and flotation agents. Tires contain stearic acid which helps them run cooler, maintain elasticity, and last longer.
Cattle bones, horns, and hooves also supply materials for buttons, bone china (from which many knick-knacks are made), piano keys, glues, fertilizer, and gelatin for photographic film, paper, wallpaper, sandpaper, combs, toothbrushes, and violin strings. Laundry pre-treatments may contain enzymes from cattle and sheep.
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There may be fatty acids from cattle or other animals added to toilet paper to make it soft. Hooves and horns can be utilized to make glue. Dish soap may contain beef fat to keep your hands soft.
Candles may have beef byproducts to provide more strength and help them last longer. Some printing inks, especially for high gloss printing, may contain animal fats.
Nail polish remover contains gelatin to help give nails strength. Soap, lotions, makeup and lipstick may contain stearic acid. When people clean their contact lenses, they might use little white tablets called enzymatic cleaners, which contain enzymes from animals.
Saddle soap (for any type of leather product) helps leather maintain softness, and generally contains animal byproducts. Antifreeze may contain glycerol, an animal byproduct. Hydraulic brake fluid and car wax also may contain animal byproducts.
Office chairs, car seats, wallets, watch bands and hundreds of other products can be made from leather; many people prefer leather options because they often look nicer and last longer than imitations and substitutes.
Enhancing human lives
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More than 100 different drugs with varied functions—such as helping make childbirth safer, settling an upset stomach, preventing blood clots, controlling anemia, relieving symptoms of hay fever and asthma, and helping babies digest milk—include cattle byproducts.
Insulin is probably the best-known pharmaceutical derived from cattle. There are 5 million diabetics in the U.S., and 1.25 million require insulin daily.
With genetic engineering, many of the drugs produced from cattle are now being made in a laboratory—often less expensively than from animal organs—but before the advent of these methods, natural products from cattle saved many lives, and some drugs still depend on ingredients from cattle.
Antirejection drugs—utilized when someone has a heart transplant, liver transplant or ligament replacement in a knee—may contain certain byproducts. These drugs help the body accept a new organ or part, since cattle, sheep and swine have great similarities to our human bodies.
Much of the material for surgical sutures is derived from intestines of meat animals. Ointments for burns and first-aid creams may contain animal byproducts. The sticky part on bandages can be made from animal fatty acids (which are used to make adhesives). New uses for cattle byproducts are discovered almost daily, and many of those uses are in the field of medicine.
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Cowhide has supplied humans with essential items for thousands of years. Even with modern artificial, chemically produced materials, many people still choose leather. In the sports world, one cattle hide could make: 12 basketballs, 144 baseballs, 20 footballs, 18 volleyballs, 18 soccer balls, or 12 baseball gloves. Leather is still the preferred material for most sports equipment.
Vegetarians and animal rights folks want to ban all uses of livestock and promote vegan leather, or “pleather,” which is a poor substitute for the functionality of animal hides—just marketing terms to replace the word “plastic.” Despite eco-friendly sounding names, production of leather alternatives is as detrimental to the environment as other synthetic fabrics, and in some cases worse.
Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) has been used as a leather substitute, but vinyl is a petroleum-based material and a known human carcinogen, producing toxic byproducts like dioxins. In addition to possible climate impacts of petroleum extraction and processing, vinyl fabric is usually made by adhering PVC to a polyester backing. Polyester is also a synthetic, petroleum-based material with significant environmental impacts.
Leather often lasts decades longer than less-durable, lower-quality alternatives. Considering longevity and cost of replacement, leather is cheaper than plastic substitutes. Pleather is basically plastic (polyurethane or polypropylene) on a polyester backing. Both layers of this fabric are petroleum products, and manufacturing processes involve harmful chemicals.
Some companies are introducing new kinds of leather-like materials made from other sources—like mushrooms and fungus cultures. MusKin is a leather-like material made from caps of a mushroom called Phellinus ellipsoideus. The extracted fungus can be used like animal leather, but only about 430 to 530 square feet of this Italian-made vegetable leather can be produced per month.
Another alternative is Piсatex’s leather made from pineapple leaves. This vegetable leather was invented by Ananas Anam Ltd., a London-based company that uses byproducts of pineapple harvest, but pineapple leather is still in early stages of adoption.
Modern Meadow is a company that came up with a bio-fabricated material called Zoa. This imitation leather is made of protein/collagen grown in a lab, but products are not yet available.
