Gelatin: Byproduct of Cruelty

It makes jelly firm and stabilizes cheesecakes. It gives gummy candies their chewy texture and adds softness to marshmallows. It acts as a moisturizer in cosmetics, stabilizes photographic film, and makes pills easier to swallow. Gelatin is just about everywhere, yet few consumers think to ask what it is or to question the cruelty behind its manufacture.

Gelatin is a collagen (the structural protein that holds an animal’s body together) rendered from bones, skin, and connective tissues—primarily from cows and pigs, although horses and fishes are also used—and processed into a tasteless, transparent powder.

For thousands of years people have found various ways to both extract gelatin (sometimes spelled gelatine) from animals and to use the results. A 10^th-century BCE text from Baghdad, Kitab al-Tabikh (The Book of Dishes), for instance, describes a recipe for boiling fish heads into jelly.[1] Around 1150 CE, the Benedictine abbess and medical writer Saint Hildegard of Bingen recommended that patients consume broth made with calves’ feet to relieve joint pain.[2] In the mid-19^th century, gelatin became widely available in powder form in the United States, and it continues to be a highly popular gelling agent.[3]

The industries using gelatin today are diverse and often so reliant upon this byproduct of animal suffering that the global gelatin market was valued at approximately USD 7.5 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow to USD 13.14 billion by 2030.[4]

As with other products that are made from animal body parts, such as leather, gelatin is closely tied to animal agriculture. Worldwide, more than 85 billion land animals[5] and an astronomical number of fishes—estimated at potentially trillions[6]—are killed each year for commercial consumption. While most gelatin is derived from pigs and cows (nearly 99 percent[7]), it also comes from horses, donkeys, chickens, ducks, turkeys, and sheeps. Meanwhile, fish gelatin is the fastest-growing segment in the market,[8] driven in part by halal, kosher, and food safety demands.[9] Among the many fishes used are Atlantic cod, salmon, tilapia, tuna, and catfish.

Most animals used for gelatin come from industrial animal farms, where they are denied nearly all their natural instincts, suffer cruel mutilations without any pain relief, and are often confined in crowded indoor spaces before they are crammed into trucks at a young age and transported long distances to slaughterhouses. There they endure unimaginable deaths as they are rushed through a high-speed killing system. Although gelatin is characterized as a byproduct of the “meat” industry, its ubiquity makes it another pillar in the vast structure of animal exploitation.

Turning animals into gelatin is a multi-stage industrial process. The bones, tissues, and skins are first treated with either acid or alkali to remove fats and minerals. Then they are mixed with hot water and the collagen is extracted. Next, high-performance separators remove any remaining fats and fine fibers as well as calcium, residual acid, sodium, and other salts. The gelatin solution is then concentrated in a vacuum evaporation system and thickened into a mass resembling honey. Finally, highly concentrated gelatin solutions are sterilized, cooled, set, and dried, resulting in “jelly noodles” that are ground into grains.[10]

Gelatin is divided into two main types. Edible-grade gelatin comes from bones, tissues, and skins, while industrial-grade gelatin is derived from leather trimmings and is thus used for non-food applications such as furniture manufacturing and photographic film.[11]

In addition to the animal cruelty involved, there are significant environmental concerns with gelatin production. Conventional bone gelatin preparation uses acid (demineralization), alkali (liming), and water (deliming), consuming a lot of chemicals and generating a large amount of wastewater.[12]

One study of a gelatin production plant found average water consumption of 18.97 cubic meters per metric ton of gelatin produced, heat energy consumption of 22.39 gigajoules per metric ton, and electricity consumption of 1,174.76 kWh per metric ton. The study also found non-production consumption of energy and water running about 20–30 percent higher than necessary, suggesting room for major efficiency improvements.[13]

Moreover, the gelatin-manufacturing process can be harmful to those who work in these plants. Exposed as they are to such chemicals as hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, and sodium hydroxide, workers are put at risk of such maladies as inflammation and ulceration of the respiratory tract, chest pain, severe skin burns, pulmonary edema, bronchitis, emphysema, conjunctivitis, dental erosion, dermatitis, lung damage, and even cancer.[14][15][16]

Gelatin touches nearly every aspect of modern life. Yet its true cost—to animals, to the environment, and to the workers who produce it—remains largely invisible. That invisibility is not accidental. It is the result of an industry that has successfully framed suffering as a byproduct and a byproduct as something unremarkable. But every time we choose a plant-based alternative, we withdraw our support from this system and affirm that no product is worth these costs.