A South Side rendering plant was better known for the foul stench it often produced than the service it provided.
The Sanimax plant, which is closing, is one of the last sites in Ohio that render dead animals carted in by farmers, veterinarians and roadkill crews.
It's not a topic that most people think about, but consider this: One dairy cow weighs 1,500 pounds, and chicken farms house millions of birds.
When they die, they have to go somewhere.
Rendering plants take all kinds of dead animals, slaughterhouse and meat-packing castoffs, and restaurant oils and grease. They reduce these materials into oils, fats and proteins used in cosmetics, paints, pet food and livestock feed.
But the disposal of dead animals has become an increasingly thorny issue for businesses that work with them and the government agencies that regulate them.
And the loss of the Sanimax plant, which was bought by Texas-based Darling International, illustrates how rendering is a disappearing option.
"There used to be a rendering plant in every other county in some highly populated states," said Tom Cook, president of the National Renderers Association in Arlington, Va.
Cook said he knows of two other working plants in Ohio: G.A. Wintzer and Son in Wapakoneta and Holmes By-Products in Millersburg.
The number of plants in the country has been shrinking as big businesses centralize operations by buying out smaller ones. The U.S. has more than 200 working plants, 38 of which are owned by Darling. The company did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Cook said he expects Darling to truck materials from Columbus businesses to a plant in a nearby state.
Many rendering plants no longer take animals because of increasing restrictions from government and customers.
In October, the Food and Drug Administration banned the rendering of mature cows unless their brains and spinal cords are removed. The rule is intended as a safeguard against mad-cow disease.
Cook also said that disease fears have led many pet-food and livestock-feed manufacturers to reject proteins rendered from dead animals.
That has pushed businesses and agencies that traffic in animals to find other solutions.
At its Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory in Reynoldsburg, the Ohio Department of Agriculture uses a device that resembles a giant pressure cooker to render dead animals tested for dangerous viruses.
It is not a commercial rendering plant.
The liquid is sent to the city sewer system. Brittle bone fragments go to the county landfill.
Most large livestock farms in Ohio compost animals in pits, said Andy Ety, livestock environmental engineer at the Ohio Department of Agriculture.
What about roadkill? The state's preference is to let animals decompose where they drop, said Nancy Burton, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Transportation.
If a carcass is a traffic hazard, is in a stream or is on private property, the agency will take it to a landfill.
Columbus Public Service workers collect dead animals in city streets and rights of way and take them to the county landfill. They won't collect dead pets left in trash cans.
"We recommend you take them to a veterinarian," spokesman Rick Tilton said. Veterinarians can cremate the remains or send them elsewhere for disposal.
The Franklin County landfill considers dead animals no different from other garbage, said spokesman John Remy.
Remy said he's not sure whether the rendering plant's closing will bring the landfill more carcasses. "We don't see a large number of them now," he said.
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