Consider some background. The acronym TSE commonly represents these diseases which come in many forms. Two recent findings have brought these diseases to the forefront. They have shown, for example, that mink TSE can infect skunks, raccoons and monkeys. Second, it was established that the diseases can be contracted by eating infected animal parts.
Recycling is necessary because our country has serious landfill problems.
Formerly most recycled animal fats went into production of soap, but synthetics eliminated that. Faced with this market loss, renderers began to produce animal foods from offal. There is a miniscule chance today of eating the meat of a diseased animal. Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease remains very rare. Despite this our Food and Drug Administration has now banned feeding dead cattle, sheep and goats back to other ruminants.