What are some common animals used for processed meat?

Meat, fat and other carcass parts used as raw materials for the manufacture of processed meat products are mainly derived from the domesticated animal species cattle, pigs and poultry and to a lesser extend from buffaloes, sheep and goats. In some regions other animal species such as camels, yaks, horses and game animals are used as meat animals but play only a minor role in meat processing. In this context, meat can be defined as “the muscle tissue of slaughter animals”.

The other important tissue used for further processing is fat. Other edible parts of the slaughtered animal and often used in further processing are the internal organs1 (tongue, heart, liver, kidneys, lungs, diaphragm, oesophagus, intestines) and other slaughter by-products (blood, soft tissues from feet, head).A special group of internal organs are the intestines. Apart from being used as food in many regions in particular in the developing world, they can be processed in a specific way to make them suitable as sausage casings. Some of them are eaten with the sausage; others are only used as container for the sausage mix and peeled off before consumption.