Slaughter by-products

Slaughter by-products is the industry’s alternative term for offal, meaning everything edible or usable from a slaughtered carcass apart from the prime meat cuts: organs, blood, hides, bones, fat, and trimmings. Depending on the species and the market, these materials are sold directly as food, rendered into tallow, gelatine, and pet-food ingredients, or channelled into animal feed. Because by-products come from the same slaughter stream as the meat, they carry the same food-safety obligations, and specified risk materials, such as certain central nervous system tissues linked to BSE, must be identified and excluded from the human food chain under official controls.