U.S. Representatives Nick Langworth (R-NY) and Jim Costa (D-CA), along with 26 of their House colleagues, asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to revise its recent ranking of waste management technologies to again include rendering of agricultural waste. A host of business and agricultural organizations, including NPPC, say they support the move.
In June, EPA, USDA, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released the “National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics,” with a goal to prevent the loss and waste of food and increase recycling of food and other organic materials.
The National Pork Proucers COuncil (NPPC) says although the report on the strategy mentions rendering, it was removed from the accompanying infographic — titled the “Wasted Food Scale” — that ranks food waste management methods.
In the letter to EPA Administrator Michael Regan, the lawmakers said that excluding rendering, and the energy and industrial uses it fosters, from the Wasted Food Scale “will significantly impair food and organic waste reduction efforts by confusing future local, state, and federal action.”
“Since the 1800s,” the lawmakers pointed out, “rendering has handled the lion’s share of recycled agricultural wastes.”
NPPC says rendering’s finished products include animal feeds, as well as fats, oils and greases that serve as valuable feedstocks for the advanced biofuels industry.
“Those feedstocks also replace virgin oils in the production of many industrial products, including lubricants, paints, and varnishes and can be used in anaerobic digesters to produce biogas,” NPPC says.
Additionally, the rendering of contaminated animals kills bacteria, protozoa, parasitic organisms, and viruses, such as the highly pathogenic and low pathogenic avian influenza viruses.
“We believe the exclusion of rendering, and these important energy and industrial uses, from the Wasted Food Scale will significantly impair food and organic waste reduction efforts by confusing future local, state and federal action,” the lawmakers said.
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