Animal fats

Animal fats come from slaughterhouse, meat processing and catering wastes. These wastes have to be disposed, and the contained fats are separated. For hygienic reasons, there are three categories of animal by-products:

• Category 1: Material with high risk from brains or spinal cord of cattle
• Category 2: Material with medium risk from dead animals or animals killed for disease control purposes
• Category 3: Material from slaughtered healthy animals, food industry or kitchens

Large parts of category 1 and 2 materials are used for biodiesel production. Also, smaller proportions of category 3 materials are used since they are not used for feed or other applications. In 2019 animal fats provided 6% of the total feedstock for biofuel production in the EU and 8.4% in the US (Toldrá-Reig 2020).
Most relevant fatty acids are palmitic and stearic acids as saturated fatty acids and oleic, linoleic and arachidonic acids as unsaturated fatty acids (Toldrá-Reig 2020).