I think you’re right in a theoretical marketplace: there is a demand signal here and we should expect production to decrease slightly.
I don’t know that this stretches to the real marketplace. For one, it turns on how much less the next available use case is willing to pay, and historically it looks like the rendering industry has done well to find substitute uses (e.g., when synthetic soaps took off). I asked Perplexity, so fact-check this, but it suggests that slaughterhouses sell human-grade chicken for about $1.15 to $1.25 per lb, and they’d lose about $0.02 per lb on their by-product profits (<2% of the profit margin from their main product) if they switched from selling to pet food manufacturers to selling to pork farmers.
For another, I think animals are lumpy good. Selling by-products does slightly increase the profit margin, but it’s a thin part of the overall profit margin, and I don’t know if losing that valorisation stream really shifts the economics for the farmer.
Relatedly, you say
The “byproduct” designation is convenient when distinguishing animal parts of different value, but at the end of the day, if you’re paying someone for animal parts, you’re paying them to slaughter animals
I definitely see your point, but I wonder if there’s another sense where: biological waste is a ticking time bomb. It will smell and start to attract vermin and disease. From the slaughterhouses’ perspective, it’s amazing that somebody will pay to come in quickly and take that away. But the slaughterhouses would still swallow the cost, and probably not seriously consider killing fewer animals, if they had to dispose of that waste themselves.
I think you’re right in a theoretical marketplace: there is a demand signal here and we should expect production to decrease slightly.
I don’t know that this stretches to the real marketplace. For one, it turns on how much less the next available use case is willing to pay, and historically it looks like the rendering industry has done well to find substitute uses (e.g., when synthetic soaps took off). I asked Perplexity, so fact-check this, but it suggests that slaughterhouses sell human-grade chicken for about $1.15 to $1.25 per lb, and they’d lose about $0.02 per lb on their by-product profits (<2% of the profit margin from their main product) if they switched from selling to pet food manufacturers to selling to pork farmers.
For another, I think animals are lumpy good. Selling by-products does slightly increase the profit margin, but it’s a thin part of the overall profit margin, and I don’t know if losing that valorisation stream really shifts the economics for the farmer.
Relatedly, you say
I definitely see your point, but I wonder if there’s another sense where: biological waste is a ticking time bomb. It will smell and start to attract vermin and disease. From the slaughterhouses’ perspective, it’s amazing that somebody will pay to come in quickly and take that away. But the slaughterhouses would still swallow the cost, and probably not seriously consider killing fewer animals, if they had to dispose of that waste themselves.