The Jungbauer Family Website

Betty Crocker never looked so good

Steve mentors Rachel in the proper way to make potato dumplings.

Weighing in at no less that 8-12 oz a piece, potato dumplings are probably THE most important Thanksgiving Day tradition in the Jungbauer family.

Personally, MY favorite tradition is eating Old Fashioned Cream pie for breakfast the next morning!!!

Happy Thanksgiving

Count our blessings . . .

Benchmarks 2005

Unbe-leave-able!

Rachel officially hit the 5 foot mark this week. (That is only a few inches away from me, you know.)

This prompted me to finally dig through all the leaves of precious grade-school memorabilia until I finally found the tidbit of trivia I was looking for: compared to Sarah at the same age, Rachel is already 4 inches taller!!! That certainly explains why my little fourth grader has already out-grown clothes that Sarah wore in sixth grade.

What was Rachel's reaction to the big news?

Where did my girls get all that height? (Sarah is now 5' 7")

Obviously, they got it from me --- that's why I'm so short!

Deadstock

For those of you visiting, you are probably wondering what the @#$*! rendering is . . . . .

I grew up answering that question just as frequently and matter-of-factly as how to spell my name. ( A girl named Erin growing up in the 1960s was just as odd as a father in the rendering business.)

Simplistically stated, rendering is the recycling of animal by-products (i.e. dead animal parts) . . . . . into dog food, airline lubricants, soap . . . .and cosmetics! Yes . . . you can thank Porky the Pig for those luscious-looking lips and clean hands! The only part that cannot be recycled --- is the squeal. (That was the punch line for my grade-school science fair project.)

So now you know. If you still want to know more, read on.

Grandstaff Rendering

presented to the North Manchester Historical Society June 8, 1992 by David Grandstaff

In 1917 my grandfather, Oren Grandstaff, established the business. He bought rendering businesses for seven sons. Of those original plants scattered around Indiana, Ohio and Michigan, we are the last of the remaining independent family operation plants still in operation. And, we are one of six surviving Hoosier renderers out of more than 100 such operations at the turn of the century. So we have seen a lot of consolidation. In fact, as I thought about it, even at our small size we have incorpoated and consolidated two other operators in our district. We bought a plant that closed in Warsaw, Indiana a long time before I remember -- up near Whitehead Farms. We also purchased and consolidated the plant that used to operate at Huntington. So we've been a part of that consolidation. We're a small survivor.

The rendering industry, if you are not aware, is the recycling link with the food chain. Offal-slaughter plants -- fat and bone trimmings in grocery stores, waste scraps from restaurants, the kitchen here at Manchester College in fact. Dead animals collected and recycled into products you come in contact with every day in your life.
The process is really one of reduction. We do on a grand scale what you do at home -- we cook this inedible meat and fat product together, we grind it into course hamburger 1 1/2 inches in diameter and cook it in sterilizing temperatures so the moisture is completely removed. Then we separate it by pressure, by squeezing and pressing, into its liquid and fat component or solid meat and bone meal component -- continuous reprocess.
The high protein section, dry section, is an ingredient in poultry rations, hog rations, and now today we're beginning to encapsulate it and feed it to our ruminant animals. One time we thought there was not a market for this product because they couldn't handle it. Now encapsulated, it passes through and also becomes a high energy source for cattle. And if, of course, you have dogs and cats at home, almost every pet food label on the shelf has animal life products. Foods like Alpo start with and never reduce to the moisture level we do.

Inedible fats of not-for-human-consumption fats are used in consumer products ranging from highest quality soap, jet aircraft lubricants, mold releases for tires and cosmetics. That, of course, as I've already mentioned, is a high energy ingredient in many animal food formulations.

We're in fact, a very energy intensive process. We burn a lot of oil. We're very sensitive to oil embargoes and gulf wars and things like that. We process about 2 million pounds a month of otherwise potentially hazardous waste material. We try to be environmentally good neighbors. We process all of our own biodegradable waste water in our on-site discharge waste treatment plant. We employ seven route drivers and seven process employees. Our production manager is John Eades. My wife and I are the office at 218 East Main Street.
I have tonight a very brief video introducing you to the process.
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You seem to be curious about this product. What does it look like? I brought some samples. I'm all right on the meal samples -- open, pinch, feel, smell. I might have passed it out earlier but you'd have been nibbling on it all during dinner! I also brought a couple of jars of fat. Unfortunately the jars are a little too big and you can't get a very good indication of what the product looks like so I spooned some into these saucers and I'll pass them. You can see the color and so on. Our fat is a very soft product. Tallow is for the hard white white substance in soap, candles, that sort of use. Ours goes into feed and chemical industry as we've indicated. I'll also pass one of these saucers. I didn't pass that earlier because it looks so much like maple syrup. (Doesn't smell like it though.)

Questions:

Q: That meal is mixed in with other things to make dog food?
A: Yes, this is a very high protein. It's about a 60% protein product. Actually it tests a little higher than 60% so you would put it in an average hog ration like Bob would have used or any of you. No more than 200 lbs. to a ton of this for a high protein ration along with soy meal, corn or other ingredients.

Q: How near is this to what many of us once referred to as tankage?
A: I thought about that as the video was talking about the marketing of the quality control. That's probably the greatest change that we've seen in our industry. Because I remember days too when an awful lot of our product went out the door to local and area farmers who would drive in and say "I need a couple bags of tankage." To be perfectly honest, the product we sell today is not a lot different than what was referred to as tankage. The biggest difference is that we now know -- we've been forced to really get a good grip and know nutritionally the composition and each renderer has a little bit different composition of raw matereals and so on that goes into the product. Each of us has a different product even though it's the same thing. It's all a little bit different. Survival today means knowing exactly what you've got and exactly what and to whom that product is most valuable, then marketing only to them. Now there's no point trying to sell this product to someone who wants a low grade low protein, high calcium kind of meal and bone meal. You might make it in the city where you go after a lot of fats and lots of bones from stores. This product has higher value in other areas so that's what we do and that's how we market it. That's a long round-about answer to your question, but tankage today, has a lot of technical definitions. Tankage is kind of the lowest of the low grades. Tankage is a combination of about anything that you want to throw in, so our product here is not tankage. I market it under a trade name Provial 60-60% protein content and I do that for the reason that this product does not fit any of the standard ATPI Trade technical definitions. It fits two of them exactly in the middle so I use a trade name which describes the product which is 70% poultry meal and 30% meat and bone meal.

Q: Is this the same kind of bone meal that you put on your plants?
A: When you buy bone meal you're buying steamed bone meal and that is a product that is generally from whole bone at the slaughter house. And yes, it's processed much, much the same way. But it is processed all by itself.

Q: What is your territory?
A: We cover parts of about 10 counties. As you are aware there's a lot of poultry production in this area and there is also a major slaughter plant that processes the spent fowl when the laying cycle is done. Those hens are slaughtered and the meat still tastes good but is a little tough and goes into things like pot pies and Campbell soups, etc. Very tasty meat but not real tender. That's the target of that spent meat, and the offal of that slaughter I process. You are aware also that we have a fairly high concentration of hogs.

Q: Is there a market for hides?
A: There is a market for hide but the market for the rendered hide is very limited any more. There's enough production of slaughter-packer hides that the demand for what is obviously a lower grade hide as I used to produce has gotten to the point where I currently am not even handling any hides.

Q: What do you do with them?
A: They go right in the product.

Q: Didn't you used to be called a fertilizer plant?
A: As I am aware of the history of the industry, there was a very, very short time that it was called that but then kinda thrown out. The solid portion was actually discarded, because you were after the fat. That's what the rendering industry grew up on. Think about the related industry: The whaling industry is really a ship-side rendering industry. I've visited some of the seaport museums and visited a whaling ship. It's a moving rendering plant. They boil it down to get the oil. They're after the oil. The same was true when the rendering industry was begun. We didn't have any outlet for the solids. The whole bone wasn't ground in the early days. It was cooked down in open kettles and the fat was skimmed off. The broth, or whatever, and the bone were thrown out. I'm sure that where it was thrown got pretty dog-goned green after a couple of seasons of that. That's the only relationship I know to being called a fertilizer plant. But it's a misnomer that sticks very tightly. You may have seen inthe paper two or three weeks ago that there was a chemical fertilizer plant that burned. I got a couple calls from concerned friends from around the northern part of the state, concerned that I'd had another fire.

Q: What is tankage?
A: Tankage is that product composed of the tissue, bone of carcasses containing not more than normal processing amount -- it's a real technical thing, but tankage is a lower grade meat and bone meal usually fortified with blood meal to get the protein level up. It usually contains blood meal and lowest grades of raw material. If I had a sample of tankage with me tonight it would look very much like this product that I have. It would be much darker in color and the aroma would be more intense.

Feathers are processed separately. We do not process feathers. Here is one of those interesting arrangements that occurs in the development of a new business. When a Greek family bought this poultry processing plant over at Mentone, Indiana, nobody in the State of Indiana had any idea what to do with poultry offal. It's tough stuff to handle. It has some really strange characteristics. One of, if not the least troublesome of which, is when you cook it, it boils over like crazy and it foams. The vat just goes wild. It takes some specialized treating -- very specialized expensive products from Dow Chemical, to keep it from doing that during the processing. Nobody in Indiana -- it was just trash -- no renderer wanted it. My dad was smart enough to figure out that if he could learn how to cook it, there was probably be a buck in it some day. A neighboring, competing plant, on up the road -- most of you all are aware of it unfortunately -- got there the same day and so they decided they'd split it up: we'd handle the offal, and they'd handle the feathers. That's been the happiest arrangement I've ever had. The feathers are not only extremely abrasive, they just chew up equipment like crazy. They also, to be properly done, need an entirely different process.To be properly prepared for feed ingredients they need to be hydrolyzed which is really a pressure cooking kind of operation. If properly done, feather meal, if you've seen it, is a really beautiful white, fluffy product. Great stuff. Improperly done it's about three grades below tankage. Feather meal runs about 75% protein. Digestibility level is somewhat -we run 90% digestible. I don't think feather meal runs that high digestible. That can vary all over the place, depending on how it's processed. If you throw it in a cooker and cook it conventionally like you would other materials, you don't get a very digestible product. It has to be hydrolyzed to maintain its amino-acid balance and digestibility.

Q: Does that go into animal feed then?
A: Yes. And more and more research is showing that is one of the benefits of a concentrated species population in this area. More and more we are finding that species recycled species is most effective in gain and use. The amino acid balance of my product comes from primarily poultry and we feed back primarily to poultry because they benefit best from it.

Same goes for hogs. Wilson -- their product will be a little better tailored to hog production.
Hooves are often throught of as being the glue. That's a whole different process. I know of no renderer who is also in glue manufacturing. You can still buy horse hoof glue, and as a historically-oriented body as you are all familiar I am sure with the glass that was popular (I'm lost, I don't know the time period). The glass that had a very crazed, crackly surface finish to it was manufactured by taking ordinary glass, coating it with horse-hoof glue, and then heating it. As the glue dried, it actually crackled off the surface of the glass. It was a popular decorative glass, I think, at the turn of the century.

Q: Regarding control
A: We are not federally controlled. We are state regulated in terms of the majority of industrial regulations. We are under Federal guidelines such as OSHA -- Occupational Safety and Health. We meet Federal guidelines so far as waste water treatment because Indiana laws are in line with federal. Really under State licensing permitting inspection, I'd say harrassment, but it's not too bad if you play the game. If you try to do it right, they recognize that.

Q: Is there any danger that your business will go the way of the tanning industry?
A: The largest renderer in the United States is currently in bankruptcy. I don't know if that's an answer to your question. It bothers me. It really does. There's more to that story obviously than just the fact that a large nation-wide company is actually in bankruptcy proceedings. They tried to lever too much too fast, but in California, which is where a lot of our country's business problems seem to originate, the environmental regulators would really like to run the rendering companies completely out of California and they already meet incredibly high standards. They're putting out waste water that's practically ready to drink.
I don't like to be a pessimist but there are already areas in the country where there is no such thing as dead stock removal -- there isnobody left there that will handle that kind of business. So little by little - and it's just been in the last year and half that I finally got tired of trying to fight the tight marketing problems - so little by little there's going to be some segments of that lost. It's one industry that's going to supply 20 Empire State Buildings a day of inedible products with values beside the product that cannot be ignored.

Q: Regarding odor.
A: Basically what happens is when we are cooking, we boil and the product steams. What carries the aroma is steam. What we do to minimize the conduct of that odor is to get rid of the steam. Immediately when it comes off the cooker we run it through a big cooler and we knock it back down and condense it instantly back to water which we can then treat on site. Water still has that aroma but it doesn't carry. Every rendering plant in the world along with about every other industry uses rivers (When the cannery was here in town it was on the river) Everybody uses rivers. We saw at the beginning of the Federal Corps WPES Permit system begun in the 70's we'd have to meet high standards for discharge. We decided it was good because our waste water is very biodegradable. No bad stuff in it -- it's just odorous but it can be easily treated. We decided to do it, I think around 1976.

Q: How did you get involved?
A: How I got involved? O.K. I was Psychology Major - English Minor at
Wabash College in 1962. I was pretty well unsure what that was leading to, so I was working in Ft. Wayne at the State School for Mentally Retarded getting practical experience in the field of Psychology to see if there was anything there that I really wanted to go to work at. During the Sectional Basketball Tourney, February 22, 1962, a few things occurred to people in this community. George Scheerer who was at Wittenberg University tripped and fell through a glass door, almost bled to death, and bears the scars. Maybe you weren't aware of that, but George bears the scars of falling through that glass door that night. My father got called out of the basketball game to tell him that the plant out there was on fire. It wasn't on fire -- it was all over fire. You can imagine a lot of old wood around, all that high grade fat not only in tanks but also soaked into that wood over the years. It did not take very long to completely melt down to a scrap heap. The next day Jane and I said, "Well maybe we'd better go back. It will be kind of a tough time for Dad." We went back to help out for awhile. I wasn't doing anything terribly important. School would wait -- go back and help Dad out to get this thing going again and we'd be on our way. I guess we're on our way!

We have a National Association. We fund a protein research foundation. Through that we support numerous research projects. Pretty big bucks go into that. A really small operation like myself never could afford research. I don't even have lab facilities. I get all my testing done in outside laboratories. In much less time, the research is done. Small guys really benefit by hanging together. By joining the National Association I benefit by the big companies' funding of research projects. They have an extensive and ongoing research program.

Q: I assume the plant at Plymouth is still operating? They do essentially the same as you do?
A: Yes, they do. They don't do it nearly as well, I like to think. They're not only -- I want to be a little careful -- they have been very helpful to me in times of need, so they are not bad people. But man, they're sloppy operators. They are a disgrace to the industry. They are an embarrassment to the State of Indiana and they are royal thorns in the side of the lady who is the head of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. She would love to put them out of business. The problem with that is her approach would be to put all the rest of us out of business first. It's always a challenge.

Observation: It's really an industry we can't do without.
A: It is! As to recycling, we've been at it a long, long time.

We are a maintenance level. It is a very difficult-naturally I'll, when you open up the hotel, I'll be on your doors with my business card-take care of your waste-frier fat, if you have deep fat friers in operation. But new business in this area in terms of processing of major kind, it doesn't come along. Economics of going out to compete with an operation that's in 12 states, does not make much sense. If I behave myself they allow me to keep operating. If I get smart, they are capitalized to the point that they could come in and buy every account I have and I'm done tomorrow. That's the reality of being very small.

Tracy's First Review

S.C. Repertory Company show 'Try's and succeeds

BY GAIL WESTERFIELD, Packet columnist
Published Friday, November 4, 2005

The story of a May-December friendship between a crusty, once-great lawyer and judge and his spunky new secretary -- more than 50 years his junior -- could be a very trying play to sit through. But South Carolina Repertory Company's production of Joanna McClelland Glass' fine work, "Trying," continues the company's tradition of presenting excellent plays with talented actors in an intimate setting.

Playwright Glass' own experience as Judge Francis Biddle's personal secretary from 1967-68 inspired the play. Biddle was the Attorney General under Franklin D. Roosevelt and a judge in the Nuremberg trials. He is 81 at the time of the play and seems to be both resigned to his death and struggling to reconcile himself to it. Sarah, fresh from the Canadian prairie, is just 25 years old and is in many ways the complete opposite of the brilliant, fussy, occasionally abusive Biddle. The respect they find for each other through the course of the play from a gradual warming to one another over the course of the play. In a subtle, and therefore believable, way, each changes through their relationship with the other, evolving beyond their initial differences through "trying" to find their way in the world -- and out of it -- together.

The writing is sharp -- lyrical at times -- and realistic, even as it offers a look at a life and times many in the audience might not have been familiar with. Their conversations are peppered with literary allusions, the two characters deal with the issues of their time, relationships, and all kinds of loss.

At its core is the concept of "trying" in many senses. Each finds the other to be a "trying" individual to deal with in the beginning, but the larger ideas concern human attempts both to connect and to protect self, struggles to overcome life's obstacles and the many fears inherent in every life.

J. Michael Craig is simply flawless as Judge Biddle. At least three decades younger than the character he plays, he renders Biddle's frustration with the deterioration of his body and mind with extraordinary skill. As impressive as his physical performance is -- particularly the use of his hands and his wearying lame leg -- Craig also renders difficult passages of dialogue beautifully and with perfect patrician diction and enunciation. Biddle's complex character is not always likeable, particularly when he berates Sarah for what he perceives to be her inferior education and intelligence. But Craig handles these nuances expertly, never going for the easy choices of "loveable curmudgeon" or "impossible grumpy old man." His groans in the first part of the play seem clearly designed in part to elicit sympathy, so they are all the more poignant near the end of the play when Biddle very clearly is in real, excruciating pain and needs Sarah's care and attention much more than he might like to admit. As the fight drains out of him, the light fades from Craig's eyes and his inevitable end, "all passion spent," as he says, is poignant but inevitable, without a hint of false sentiment.

Tracy Jo Junghauser's role is in some ways the more difficult, in that she simply says less and it is for the most part reactive to the bravura Biddle role. In spite of this, Glass has created a good part in this autobiographical character and Jungbauer portrays Sarah with strength and intelligence. Like Craig, she resists obvious choices, so her Sarah is sympathetic but not adorable or corny.

Tom Evans' direction is strong, but he proves especially capable at finding a balance between the sometimes elevated language and a realism that makes the characters compelling. Like his actors, Evans has clearly focused the telling of the story on the human dimension, not settling for stereotypes and sentiment. No element of Biddle's wit or the humor inherent in his and Sarah's struggle to form a relationship was lost on the appreciative audience. He also handles the blocking well in what could otherwise be a very static, talk-y play on the small, object-filled set.

The set is, as always in S.C. Repertory productions, especially impressive, given the size of the space with which Evans, who designed it, had to work. Don't leave the space without checking out the amazing photographs on the walls of Biddle's office. Like so much in this fine production, this attention to detail contributes to a truly great theatrical experience.

"Trying" runs through Nov. 13. For tickets or more information, call 681-5194 or visit hiltonheadtheatre.com.

Gail Westerfield writes about the arts for The Island Packet.