were among the early pioneers of the U.S. rendering industry, with their personal backing and/or direct participation in the rendering industry. Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle (1906), an exposé on the Chicago meat processing industry which created public outrage. His work helped the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1907 which paved the way for the creation of the FDA. In 2012, the occupation of renderer appear in a list of "dirtiest jobs". Innovations came rapidly in the 20th century. Some of these were the uses for rendered products, and others were the rendering methods. In the 1920s, a batch dry rendering process was invented; the material was cooked in horizontal steam-jacketed cylinders (similar to the fertilizer dryers of the day). Advantages claimed for the dry process were economy of energy, better protein yield, faster processing, and fewer noxious odors. Over the years, the wet "tanking" process was replaced with the dry process. By the end of World War II, most rendering installations used the dry process. In the 1960s, continuous dry processes were introduced, one using a variation of the conventional dry cooker and the other making use of a mincing and evaporation process to dry the material and yield the fat. In the 1980s, high energy costs popularized the various "wet" continuous processes. These processes were more energy efficient and allowed the re-use of process vapours to pre-heat or dry the materials during the process. After WWII, synthetic detergents arrived, which displaced soaps in domestic and industrial washing. In the early 1950s, over half of the inedible fat market vanished. Diversion in these materials into animal feeds soon replaced the lost soap market and eventually became the single largest use for inedible fats. The widespread use of "boxed beef", where the beef was cut into consumer portions at packing plants rather than local butcher shops and markets, meant that fat and meat scraps for renderers stayed at the packing plants and were rendered there by packer renderers, rather than by the independent rendering companies. The rejection of animal fats by diet-conscious consumers led to a surplus of edible fats, and the resultant diversion into soapmaking and oleochemicals, displacing inedible fats and contributing to the market volatility of this commodity. Advantages and disadvantages The rendering industry is one of the oldest recycling industries, and made possible the development of a large food industry. The industry takes