The first in a four part series.

"OC’s dead pets enter the food chain. Mmmm."

"Every week, a truck pulls up to the county Animal Shelter in Orange. The carcasses of some 400 dead dogs, cats, bunnies and other unlucky creatures are loaded up. Then the truck hauls them to the West Coast Rendering plant in Vernon.

There, the remnants of Fido and Fluffy (alongside the carcasses of slaughtered cows, pigs, chickens and restaurant scraps) are essentially cooked at very high temperatures for hours.

What happens next?

The entire contents of the rendering vat are expelled as one substance, which is then dried and milled, emerging as a solid. This is “dry rendered tankage,” or crude protein.
It is then exported to “large aquacultural operations” in the Pacific Rim, where sea creatures, including shellfish, are cultivated.
Other rendering methods - not done at West Coast, its attorney stresses - separate out frothy fats (which make their way into lipsticks, lubricants, polishes, waxes); harder fats (which go into soaps, candles, drugs, gummy candies); and the densest stuff, which is dried and ground into protein powder that’s a key ingredient in animal feed.

Enough to make you a vegetarian?

The County of Orange sent about 23,000 animal carcasses to the vats last year, and set aside $49,000 to pay West Coast Rendering for this service (a little more than $2 per carcass)."

http://taxdollars.freedomblogging.com/2008/07/21/ocs-dead-pets-enter-the-food-chain-mmmm/

FOOD POISONING: YOU ARE EATING CALIFORNIA'S DEAD PETS!
October 02, 2007

October 2, 2007 --- All of the dead animals in California are added to the feed of chicken, fish, beef, shrimp, etc.,which we humans eat every day. Virtually all of the animals killed in shelters and veterinary clinics,road kill, medical laboratories, feed lots, deceased wildlife, etc., are sent to one company, West Coast Rendering in Vernon, CA, where they are piled up and left to decompose for days before being “rendered” into a sale-able product.

“Rendering means that these dead animals are cooked in a giant stew pot for an hour, at just above boiling, and then the fat is drained off this soup and put in drums for shipment to cattle feed facilities in California and elsewhere,” said Leo Grillo, founder of the largest care-for-life cat & dog sanctuary in the world, D.E.L.T.A. Rescue, of Glendale, CA, “the rest is ground up into a powder and loaded by tractor into either a container or an open grain truck, which is later used for grain and feed transport.”

“Our D.E.L.T.A. Rescue Humane Investigation Unit followed trucks to American companies where the powder, now called ‘protein meal,’ is added to farm-animal feed. We also followed containers to the ports where they are loaded for shipment to Asia ... to be added to feed for the farmed fish and seafood that comes back to the United States and is sold in our supermarkets. Check the labels of the seafood in the stores: ‘product of Thailand, Vietnam, etc.’”

Full article at link.
http://www.mmdnewswire.com/food-poisoning-you-are-eating-californias-dead-pets-2319.html