BEEF BY-PRODUCTS

When a butcher buys a carcass, he buys far more than the cuts of meat yielded  meat yielded from the carcass.  About 50-60% only of a meat animal carcass is meat.

At one time the only by-products saved were, hides, tallow and tongue. It is estimated that 8.51% of a steer carcass and 15.1% of calf carcass are redeemed from by-products. Hides usually are 2..5%. ¹

MAIN GROUPS OF BY-PRODUCTS

1. Fats: Used for soaps, animal feeds, lubricants, leather dressing, candles, fertilizers, margarine. Also glycerine for explosives.
2. Hides: Used for shoes, harness & saddles, belt­ing, bags, footballs. Value of hide is lowered if badly damaged by brands and horns.
3. Variety Meats: The heart, liver, brains, kidney, tongue, cheek meat, tail, sweetbreads (thyrnus and pancreatic glands), tripe (rumen).
4. Hair: Artists & camel hair brushes are made from the fine hair inside the ears of cattle. Hair for mattresses, padding etc. is also recovered.
5. Hoofs & Horns: Knife handles, combs, buttons, glues, gelatin.
6. Blood: Blood sausage, buttons, shoe polish, stock feeds.
7. Bones: Bones & cartilages are converted into stock feed, fertiliser glue, dice, knife handles, buttons, bone charcoal, bone china.
8. Meat Scraps & Muscle Tissue: Meat meal, meat extract.
9. Intestines & Bladder: Suet, surgical needs, sausage and small goods, casings, meat meal and rennet for cheese making.
10. Glands: Supply more than 100 drugs and hor­mones for medical use, such as insulin, pepsin, epinephrine, cortisone, adrenalin, heparin, liver extract, parathyroid, pituitary extract, rennin, thyroid extract, thrombin, gelatin.
11. Collagen: (Sinews, lips, connective tissues), is used for glue and gelatin.  
12. Rumen Contents: Used for making fertiliser