and then pressed to remove a water-fat mixture that is then separated into fat, water, and fine solids by stages of centrifuging and/or evaporation. The solids from the press are dried and then ground into meat and bone meal. Most independent renderers process only inedible material. Kitchen rendering Rendering of fats is also carried out on a kitchen scale by chefs and home cooks. In the kitchen, rendering is used to transform butter into clarified butter, suet into tallow, pork fat into lard, and chicken fat into schmaltz. History The development of rendering was primarily responsible for the profitable utilization of meat industry by-products, which in turn allowed the development of a massive industrial-scale meat industry that made food more economical for the consumer. Rendering has been carried out for many centuries, primarily for soap and candle making. The earliest rendering was done in a kettle over an open fire. This type of rendering is still done on farms to make lard (pork fat) for food purposes. With the development of steam boilers, it was possible to use steam-jacketed kettles to make a higher grade product, and reduce fire danger. From at least 1896, yellow grease has referred to lower-quality grades of tallow (cow or sheep fat) from animal rendering plants. A further development came in the 19th century with the use of steam digesters: a tank used as a pressure cooker where steam was injected into the material being rendered. This process is a wet rendering process called "tanking" and was used for edible and inedible products, although better grades of edible products were made using the open kettle process. After the material is tanked, the free fat is run off, the remaining water ("tank water") run into a separate vat, and the solids removed and dried by pressing and steam-drying in a jacketed vessel. The tank water was either run into a sewer or it was evaporated to make glue or protein concentrate to add to fertilizer. The solids were used for fertilizer. The pressure tank made possible the development of the Chicago meat industry in the United States—with its concentration in one geographic area—because it allowed the economic disposal of byproducts which would otherwise overwhelm the environment in that area. At first, small companies that sprang up near the packers did the rendering. Later the packers entered the rendering industry. Gustavus Swift, Nelson Morris, and Lucius Darling