The fifth quarter: Unlocking nutrition, carcass value, and sustainability in red meat

So how does using more parts of the animal contribute to reducing waste and perhaps creating a more sustainable industry?

Every animal we slaughter carries a real cost.

The animal doesn't just appear by its own.

There's land cost, water, feed, carbon footprint, electricity.

The farmer had to put in efforts to get the farmer's there.

And that cost doesn't change whether we use 60% of the animal or whether we use 100% of the animal.

The input cost stays the same.

So the sustainable logic here is actually very simple.

If the fifth quarter is about 20 to 35% of the animal's live weight, we're not using it properly.

We're wasting a significant portion of every environmental input that went into raising this animal for no nutritional return at all for this animal.

So all of this effort that was put in is just wasted.

And we flip that around, and using more of the animal means we get more protein, we get more iron, we get more vitamins out of exactly the same input cost that we had into this animal, who can't just grow steaks from an animal.

The organ meats are obviously also part of the whole process to get the animal to a slaughter weight.

And that is about as direct a sustainability win as the industry has available to it, and it doesn't require a single additional animal to be raised.

So the input cost, you just get so much more bang for your buck using the entire animal.

And there's a practical side too.

When we tested how these organs cook, liver in particularly retained somewhere between 76 to 84% of its raw weight as usable edible product, and liver has no bone in it.

It has very little trimming waste in it.

So we're basically using all of this meat.

There's not so much waste from this product.

So all of the input costs that went into this animal is utilized.

There's real value in doing this and consuming these parts, and this is also seen in different studies.

It's not just something in South Africa.

In a major UK study where they're also focusing on offal, government sustainability reported on the future of food and farming specifically flagged better use of animal byproducts as one of the practical levers for a more sustainable global food system.

So it's a global phenomenon that we want to eat the entire animal.