Guess What? Chicken Fat

by Jack Baruth

Published: November 8th, 2010

Tyson developed a diesel fuel made from chicken fat and food grease. It’s opening a plant Monday in Louisiana that can turn out 75 million gallons of the fatty fuel a year.

At the same time, they’re calling the federal government’s subsidies on ethanol… well, chicken.

It’s possible that a few of you are not intimately acquainted with the activites undertaken by the National Chicken Council, but surely that unwarranted ignorance stopped when the NCC spoke out on E15:

“Rising grain prices driven by the voracious demand for feedstock from the heavily subsidized ethanol industry caused an increase of six percent in the retail price of fresh whole broiler chickens from 2008 to 2010,” said George Watts, president of the National Chicken Council. “Channeling even more corn into ethanol will, in time, only drive up the cost of chicken even more. Consumers will end up paying for the ethanol industry’s demands. It is time to put an end to interference in the market and government mandates that benefit the ethanol industry and raise the price of corn.”

Is the NCC’s principled opposition to ethanol in our fuel based simply on food price, or are its members squawking a bit for the purpose of attracting similar subsidies to what could be a rather profitable biodiesel business? Even a birdbrain could answer that question.

Jack Baruth

More by Jack Baruth

Comments

Join the conversation

8 of 26 comments

George B on Nov 08, 2010

If I understand the issue correctly, conversion of soybeans to methyl-ester biodiesel gets a big government subsidy to buy votes in Midwestern swing states. Meat producers and oil refiners in politically non-competitive states like Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas came up with a way to convert animal fat into real hydrocarbon diesel. Their complaint is plant based biodiesel gets a bigger subsidy than animal based diesel. If the goal was to reduce dependence on petroleum, the meat producers have a legitimate point. However, the real reason soybeans get the subsidy and chicken doesn't is Iowa gets first shot at narrowing the field of Presidential candidates. http://www.etrucker.com/apps/news/article.asp?id=59491

Like Reply
Umbabaru on Nov 08, 2010

When oil prices skyrocketed a few years back, and commodity prices headed up as well, Piedmont Biofuels made our local bio-diesel with poultry fat from area processing plants. Made great bio-diesel with the only problem being that it had a higher gel point than vegetable-fat-based BD. Ran beautifully in my TDI.

Like Reply
Mike978 on Nov 08, 2010

Trailertrash - it is well known that Defence companies are subsidied (Boeing for instance) and oil companies get massive handouts. As for the stupid comment earlier that it is the poor people who are now fat. Being fat doesn`t mean you eat well or are well fed. I can show you pictures of children suffering from malnutrition who have stomach's the stick out.

Like Reply
- See 3 previous
- Psarhjinian on Nov 08, 2010
  
  Poor people are fat partly because cheap food is chock-full of simple carbohydrates, partly because fitness is not easy to indulge in when you have little time and less money, and time is very much a precious commodity when you're not well-to-do. For an example, take note of all the yoga-toned hard-bodies** who frequent Whole Foods and it's ilk, or look at the kinds of cars in the parking lots at most gyms. ** At least two times a month I meet a few customers and colleagues in Oakville (where I am now). Because I hate driving in gridlock, I take the train there and meet them at the Whole Foods parking lot. There are some very, very attractive women (and few men, but not many), all driving the Oakville "kept woman" vehicle of choice (generally, the ML-Class, but you see a few X5s and RXs). Compare this with the No Frills I shop at: you can tell who spends three hours a day at the gym and has a nanny, and who works eight hours a day and has to get dinner ready when they get home
  
  Like
- ChuckR on Nov 08, 2010
  
  Would either of you prefer to starve or to be fat even if the latter is based on a less than optimal diet? How many fat poor people would willingly chose starvation? Doesn't that question answer itself? Human appetite is hard wired on what we've had for millenia, feast or famine. Should we hope that cheap food becomes better food? Sure, and it is possible to eat a decent meal at McKing burger joints. Will you be the nannies telling people that they MUST eat what you want them to? Not on my tax dime, thanks. You could, however, suggest to teachers that they spend a little less time on climate change, recycling and their favorite politicians and a little more time on what used to be called home economics. Stomachs that stick out may or may not have anything to do with gross caloric intake. Those pictures you can show me, I've seen. They are rare in the US and when taken in Africa usually are coupled to lack of transportation infrastructure or corruption or are a result of a deliberate warfare strategy. In the US the only explanation is none of those - it's child neglect and ignorance.
  
  Like
- Psarhjinian on Nov 08, 2010
  Will you be the nannies telling people that they MUST eat what you want them to? We already do, in a way. We spent a lot of money developing a carb-laden RDA% and continue to spend lot of money subsidizing corn and wheat to such a degree that it's cheap to make and, importantly, cheap to buy the kind of food that encourages obesity and diabetes. Considering your dime is already being worked paying for the results of these problems, perhaps spending it on prevention instead of cure might be wise? You could, however, suggest to teachers that they spend a little less time on climate change, recycling and their favorite politicians and a little more time on what used to be called home economics. Cooking is not hard. Having the time and money to cook well is relatively difficult. The rich eat better than the poor because they have the education, time and money to do so. I always use the bread and pasta sauce example. If I want to make bread or pasta sauce that doesn't have sugar in it, I have to (for bread) buy all the ingredients and hand around the house making it, waiting for it to rise, baking it and so forth. For pasta sauce I have to buy a pile of tomatoes and reduce them for hours. All this takes time: time that a single mother or poor working family doesn't have, but a rich family with hired help and/or only one working parent certainly can. No, go to the store and look at how much stuff has added sugars or corn starches: everything from breakfast cereal to bread to sauces to meats. Everything. Unless you spend a lot of money and/or time, you can't get away from it. It's not as simple as teaching home economics. Stomachs that stick out may or may not have anything to do with gross caloric intake. Those pictures you can show me, I’ve seen They are rare in the US and when taken in Africa usually are coupled to lack of transportation infrastructure or corruption or are a result of a deliberate warfare strategy. That condition has to do with malnutrition. It comes from not getting enough protein, and is the result of a fluid retention and liver damage. You get it from eating nothing but nutritionally void food (eg, white rice) when you do eat at all. It's very hard to get it North America unless you are desperately poor and very isolated.
  
  Like
- ChuckR on Nov 08, 2010
  
  My tax dime is already being used on various farm subsidies. The way it works is those subsidies would remain while another tax dime is taken to hire people to hector us all not to consume the products produced by those subsidies. Its not rational, its government! I'm all in favor of removing production subsidies. My father-in-law claimed he would have made more money as a farmer if the dopes had gone out of business as a consequence of their own bad decisions. He was right. No way I'm jumping in the foodie briar patch. WebMD has a list of nutritious cheap food, not as easy and quick as nuking prepared food. BTW, at dinner, I checked the pasta sauce in the pantry - two with no sugar or catchall natural flavors, one with sugar and my daughter's organic sauce with dehydrated cane juice (really, and she may have paid extra for that circumlocution). Back to the topic, it isn't prudent to assume that we'll always have the capacity to feed ourselves and others while increasingly diverting food to fuel. Diverting chicken fat from landfill to diesel, sure. Corn-gaso-hol, soybean-o-diesel, no. Borlaug and others bought humanity a half century without Erlich's famines occurring, but another similar period of time isn't guaranteed.
  
  Like
Panzerfaust on Nov 08, 2010

Oh, I can't wait for the PETA wing of the greenwashers to get ahold of this innovation! I can hear it now "how many chickens had to die for you to drive the work this morning?" Oh, the humanity,... er poultry. whatever.

Like Reply