Bipartisan congressional group champions inclusion of rendering in EPA food-waste strategies

The North American Renderers Association expressed its gratitude Sept. 20 to Reps. Nick Langworthy, R-New York, and Jim Costa, D-California, for their bipartisan leadership in addressing the removal of rendering from the U.S. EPA’s food-waste management.

Rendering plays a critical role in recycling organic waste, producing biofuels and ensuring food safety.

Last year, rendering was excluded from EPA’s "Wasted Food Scale" without explanation, likely due to an oversight in a third-party report, according to NARA.

Despite efforts to provide relevant environmental data, EPA has not yet committed to reviewing it, which is causing economic harm to the industry.

A group of 28 members of Congress, led by Langworthy and Costa, sent a letter to EPA Administrator Michael Regan urging the agency to work with USDA and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to revise the National Strategy for Food Loss and Waste, including rendering as a key component in national waste-reduction strategies.

In addition to NARA, over 30 other organizations support this letter.

A similar bipartisan letter, signed by eight senators, was sent to Regan in May, in which Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack and FDA Commissioner Robert Califf expressed their concern that rendering was not included in the draft national strategy.

“NARA would like to express our gratitude to Reps. Langworthy and Costa, and this bipartisan group of members, for recognizing the longstanding and critical role rendering has played and still plays in reducing food loss and waste, and shrinking our overall food-production footprint,” said NARA President and CEO Kent Swisher.

“The North American rendering industry has been upcycling otherwise lost and wasted food since the 1800s,” Swisher added. “We are the original recyclers and were a part of the circular economy even before the term was coined. We urge Administrator Regan and the EPA to acknowledge rendering’s important role in food loss and waste. Leaving out rendering, our nation’s largest organic recycler, from our national food-waste strategy will only hinder us from achieving America’s goal to halve food loss and waste by 2030.”

NARA said it remains committed to collaborating with EPA, Congress and stakeholders to ensure rendering’s critical role in food-waste management is properly recognized.