Schmaltzmobiles Coming Soon
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 01. 3.07
Harold Bate's Chicken Powered 1953 Hillman "Chicken Coupe"
In Missouri two nice boys, Jerry Bagby and Harold Williams, are making biodiesel from schmaltz, Yiddish for chicken fat, which used to be considered a yummy treat to spread on toast. The Tyson Foods plant nearby makes tons of it, and they mix it with soybean oil, hoping to make up to three million gallons of biodiesel per year. Believe me, better in your car than in your arteries. The Rockford Registar Star notes: "Today, only a tiny fraction of U.S. biodiesel is made from chicken fat, but that seems likely to change. The rising cost of soybean oil — which accounts for roughly 90 percent of all biodiesel fuel stock — is pushing the industry to exploit cheap and plentiful animal fats. The nation’s biggest meat corporations haven taken notice. Tyson Foods announced in November it has established a renewable energy division that will be up and running during 2007. Competitors Perdue Farms Inc. and Smithfield Foods Inc. are making similar moves."(and Smithfield has a lot of the unkosher stuff) via ::ecosherpa
so wait, is this chicken fat waste from processing, or are we raising chickens now purely to use their fat as fuel?
things like this get my ethics in a bunch. exploiting animals is wrong, destroying the planet is wrong, cant i just get a car that runs on the lard from kfc customers?
I can't help but wonder how many people will jump on this as an excuse to not cut back on energy use. Factory farming chickens is not sustainable, but now it may prove more subsidizable by producing cheap(er) fuel. I'm sure the product will hit the market in a large way, as all the big players in poisoning the planet have a vested interest in making it happen.
Now what? When I finally am purchasing a vehicle, will biodiesel be an option for me? I'm vegan, so now I'll have to know not just where the fuel was grown, but what (or who) was killed for it. Even if I wasn't vegan, what about social responsibility? The cheap chicken fat is going to come from factory farms, which are notorious for worker abuse and union-busting tactics. Environmental issues? Go find out how much waste is produced by Tyson alone. That doesn't even begin to cover the air pollution in the form of concentrated ammonia that comes from these places.
All in all, I feel that this is potentially a very un-treehugger development.