6 ms·

What do slaughter houses with the left over pig fat these days instead?

by nn3 7y ago

hinkley 7y ago
I used to know the answer to that from relatives who had a meat packing plant in town. Tallow, according to the internet. If memory serves, any fat that is mishandled also goes off to make tallow.
HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
They sell it as lard. I live in the Midwest and I'm really surprised to hear all these people saying lard is hard to find. It's in all the grocery stores here.
linksnapzz 7y ago
As I understand it, the desire of US meatpackers for leaner "healthier" other-white-meat pork led to breeders selecting for leaner pigs. There may actually be less pig fat left over these days. Of course, this means that your porkchops, pork loin, pork ribs, bacon joints etc. will be leaner and drier and tougher than the ones your grandmother or great-grandmother got from her butcher. I've heard old people remark on this numerous times. This was not universal around the world, though. This place: http://www.ginzabairin.com/ http://www.ginzabairin.com/ seemed to indicate that in Japan, flavor and mouth feel were more important than ever-increasing leanness in porkchops...mmmmmmmmmmm
analog31 7y ago
One answer is soap. Maybe a decade or two ago, it was possible to buy bars of "soap" that were made from detergent rather than actual soap. A useful advantage was that it didn't produce soap scum in areas with hard water. Zest advertised this: "You're not really clean, till you're Zest-fully clean." Today, the same brands all list lard and tallow in their ingredients, and the detergent is gone. I'm betting that lard and tallow are cheaper. I use detergent based liquid body wash for this reason, since we have hard water. Animal fats and soaps are still used in some industrial processes as lubricants, because they're non toxic and cheap. An example is some kinds of sheet metal forming and drawing. But I doubt those uses can consume the entire production of lard and tallow, which must be quite a lot.

What do slaughter houses with the left over pig fat these days instead?

by nn3 7y ago

What do slaughter houses with the left over pig fat these days instead?

I used to know the answer to that from relatives who had a meat packing plant in town. Tallow, according to the internet. If memory serves, any fat that is mishandled also goes off to make tallow.

HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago

They sell it as lard. I live in the Midwest and I'm really surprised to hear all these people saying lard is hard to find. It's in all the grocery stores here.

linksnapzz 7y ago

As I understand it, the desire of US meatpackers for leaner "healthier" other-white-meat pork led to breeders selecting for leaner pigs. There may actually be less pig fat left over these days. Of course, this means that your porkchops, pork loin, pork ribs, bacon joints etc. will be leaner and drier and tougher than the ones your grandmother or great-grandmother got from her butcher. I've heard old people remark on this numerous times. This was not universal around the world, though. This place: http://www.ginzabairin.com/ http://www.ginzabairin.com/ seemed to indicate that in Japan, flavor and mouth feel were more important than ever-increasing leanness in porkchops...mmmmmmmmmmm

analog31 7y ago

One answer is soap. Maybe a decade or two ago, it was possible to buy bars of "soap" that were made from detergent rather than actual soap. A useful advantage was that it didn't produce soap scum in areas with hard water. Zest advertised this: "You're not really clean, till you're Zest-fully clean." Today, the same brands all list lard and tallow in their ingredients, and the detergent is gone. I'm betting that lard and tallow are cheaper. I use detergent based liquid body wash for this reason, since we have hard water. Animal fats and soaps are still used in some industrial processes as lubricants, because they're non toxic and cheap. An example is some kinds of sheet metal forming and drawing. But I doubt those uses can consume the entire production of lard and tallow, which must be quite a lot.