Would it be more efficient to process the whole body of an animal into "meat"?

[szputnyik]

I'm playing with the Tekkit modpack for Minecraft, which adds various technological items like machines to the game.

One of these machines is called the Slaughterhouse. What it does is that it kills every nearby animal and "monster" like zombies etc. and processes it into a homogenous nutritional goo called "meat", which can then be cooked and eaten.

Could a similar thing be done in real life? Grinding up a whole pig for example and then cooking the mixture of its semi-liquefied meat, ground-up bones, and sterilized bowel contents?

Would this be more efficient than current methods of animal butchering?

[TechnicalK3rbal]

What do you think a sausage is?

[Camacha]

In many countries this is not allowed for cows, because of mad cow disease. Also, look up what seperator meat is - it pretty much boils down to the same.

I do not think it would be much more efficient, as you cannot use specific qualities of certain parts of the animal. All the bad gets mixed in with the good.

[Tex]

Efficient.... eh, maybe. But remember the mathematical term "averaging"- Putting all the less desirable meats in with the desirable ones (say, pig intestines mixed with bacon) would drastically reduce the average quality of the meat product. You might get more, sure, but the repulsion factor means it probably wouldn't catch on XD

[shynung]

It might be more efficient in terms of human effort, because all the butchers now have to do is to insert the whole animal into a hopper or the like, and receive meat products out the other end. Though, I'd doubt the quality of the meat produced, now that ground bones and bowel contents are included; traditional slaughtering facilities discard these.

[Camacha]

traditional slaughtering facilities discard these.

Very little is actually discarded, most stuff ends up in animal feed or similar products one way or another. People might not agree with the bio industry, but that is one aspect that is not so bad.

[Duxwing]

Quieting my stomach yields an interesting idea: stampede the animals into an industrial garbage grinder.

-Duxwing

[shynung]

Very little is actually discarded, most stuff ends up in animal feed or similar products one way or another. People might not agree with the bio industry, but that is one aspect that is not so bad.

Ground bones as animal feed might be acceptable as additives, but I'm not sure about bowel contents. I mean, aren't bowel contents literally excrement-in-the-making?

[lajoswinkler]

Whole animal?

That would include:

- central nervous system (potentially extremely dangerous and thus banned from selling because of mad cow disease)

- bones (if you grind them well enough together with meat, the meat is virtually atomized into homogeneous paste)

- hair (you can't process that in your stomach)

- liquid tissues: blood, lymph (it spoils easily)

- urine (toxins)

- excrement inside colon (dangerous bacteria, toxins)

Maybe there's more, but on top of my mind, this is it.

It simply couldn't be done if you want healthy animal products. You'd get a poisonous, disgusting, smelly mush.

[Tex_NL]

...

- hair (you can't process that in your stomach)

...

L-Cysteine (in the EU marked as E920 or E921) is widely used in the food industry. In particular in the baking of bread. And guess where it comes from: hair. It is even made from HUMAN hair.

Enjoy your meal!

[jwenting]

Soilent Green is people!

[Sky_walker]

Ground bones as animal feed might be acceptable as additives, but I'm not sure about bowel contents. I mean, aren't bowel contents literally excrement-in-the-making?

That's not a part of an animal. At least: not yet.

But anyway - some of this stuff is used in cosmetics industry. Don't ask.

[Nuke]

Ground bones as animal feed might be acceptable as additives, but I'm not sure about bowel contents. I mean, aren't bowel contents literally excrement-in-the-making?

what do you think they make gelatin out of. when you are eating jello, you are eating animal skeletons.

theres a whole other market for entrails. aside from the food products which still exist (natural sausage casings), things like instrument strings, airship gas bags, and sheep skin condoms come to mind.

you want gross, watch the episode of dirty jobs about animal recycling.

Edited July 12, 2014 by Nuke

[lodestar]

Sure, if you can have a machine where you can feed a whole cow and it's safely processed into an edible goo that resembles meat, it may be a lot more efficient, but economically it wouldn't make much sense, since most animals have premium cuts that sell for much more than the average.

That might be economically viable for small animals that demand a lot of work, but don't have parts much more valuable than the others. Think about chickens and McNuggets, or fish and surimi.

[Tarrow]

Ground bones as animal feed might be acceptable as additives, but I'm not sure about bowel contents. I mean, aren't bowel contents literally excrement-in-the-making?

Yup. The beef industry has used "chicken litter" as a protein supplement for herds for many years. Chicken litter being the mix of excrement, feathers, dropped feed pellets and bedding material that's swept from the floor of chicken coops. It's sterilised by heat before use.

From a food-chain perspective it's more efficient than using that same chicken waste as fertiliser to grow crops to feed the cattle.

Edited July 12, 2014 by Tarrow

[Camacha]

- excrement inside colon (dangerous bacteria, toxins)

They bleach (cheap) meat already to make it safe for consumption. See the link I posted earlier.

[Nuke]

Soilent Green is people!

i personally think we should recycle dead humans back into the food chain. this would make excellent pig feed, since pigs will eat anything. the end result is more bacon, i dont see why anyone would find issue with that.

[Camacha]

i personally think we should recycle dead humans back into the food chain. this would make excellent pig feed, since pigs will eat anything. the end result is more bacon, i dont see why anyone would find issue with that.

There is probably a good reason people do not eat other people - it is an excellent way of transferring nasty bacterial/viral/prion diseases. Some of those can be mitigated through cooking or sterilizing, some can not. There are a few cannibalistic tribes left and those suffer from these problems. It is also the reason why mad cow disease is what it is, because we fed cows to other cows, keeping harmful stuff in the cycle.

So yeah, there is actually a pretty good non-cultural reason people do not eat people and why we need our dead bodies out of the food chain.

[ZetaX]

Read his post again: he feeds the humans to the pigs first.

[Camacha]

Read his post again: he feeds the humans to the pigs first.

Read my post again: it does not matter. Pigs are not going to magically make the dangerous diseases go away - just like that did not happen with cows. Bacteria we can probably deal with, the others are a little bit dicey.

[lajoswinkler]

They bleach (cheap) meat already to make it safe for consumption. See the link I posted earlier.

There isn't amount of bleach that would make edible. It's toxic waste.

i personally think we should recycle dead humans back into the food chain. this would make excellent pig feed, since pigs will eat anything. the end result is more bacon, i dont see why anyone would find issue with that.

As animals on the top of the food chain, we gather lots of nasty stuff inside of us. Heavy metals come to mind. Not to mention the danger of viruses and prions...

Human body could be rendered into harmless goo, but the process is too expensive, and people don't just drop dead like flies, so it's not economically viable.

Problems with cannibalsm (prions) have evolved into a sense of morality. Civilized people don't eat other people like they eat apples. Today's cannibalistic societies can truly be called inferior breed. Incredibly low average IQ, high aggression, poorly developed morality.

L-Cysteine (in the EU marked as E920 or E921) is widely used in the food industry. In particular in the baking of bread. And guess where it comes from: hair. It is even made from HUMAN hair.

Enjoy your meal!

I don't have problems with that. L-cisteine from a cow or a man, it's the same molecule.

And it's not hair. It's L-cisteine, so your argument fails.

It has nothing to do with cannibalism.

[78stonewobble]

There is probably a good reason people do not eat other people - it is an excellent way of transferring nasty bacterial/viral/prion diseases. Some of those can be mitigated through cooking or sterilizing, some can not. There are a few cannibalistic tribes left and those suffer from these problems. It is also the reason why mad cow disease is what it is, because we fed cows to other cows, keeping harmful stuff in the cycle.

So yeah, there is actually a pretty good non-cultural reason people do not eat people and why we need our dead bodies out of the food chain.

They ate brains didn't they?

If you stick to the meat of healthy people you should be fine. If you exclude the bleargh factor and all the other crap we might have in us.

[Camacha]

As animals on the top of the food chain, we gather lots of nasty stuff inside of us. Heavy metals come to mind. Not to mention the danger of viruses and prions...

Human body could be rendered into harmless goo, but the process is too expensive, and people don't just drop dead like flies, so it's not economically viable.

Prions are hard to destroy reliably. This is a problem in the medical world, so making something fit for mass consumption that is potentially infected is simply not feasible.

[lajoswinkler]

They ate brains didn't they?

If you stick to the meat of healthy people you should be fine. If you exclude the bleargh factor and all the other crap we might have in us.

Not exactly. Meat contains nerves. The danger is less prominent, but still...

Not to mention parasites. Bleurgh, yes.

[Dispatcher]

If you stick to the meat of healthy people you should be fine.

Most people die of disease, substance abuse or old age (and these factors may lead to a significant portion of accidental deaths as well). People who die in conflicts are also subject to great duress, which affects their body chemistry. There are many forms of animal protein that are much more feasible to access (rabbits, aquaculture flora and fauna, cooked insects, earthworms, etc.) and vegetable protein combinations which are much more economical, safer and much less socialogically taboo.