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Sewer Fatbergs (Giant Fat & Refuse Clogs)

Just ordered a donner for dinner, looking forward to it,and as kebeb shops are the only thing open at 3am, its the staple diet of taxi drivers.:D
 
I was convinced that the subject of sewer fat was mentioned in Trench and Hillman’s classic book London Under London - A Subterranean Guide, but after a quick perusal I think I must have been mistaken.

They do however mention two men in medieval London who asphyxiated trying to retrieve a barrel of wine from a cess-pit - a very early precursor of the “man dies trying to retrieve mobile phone from latrine” type story that pops up in the media from time to time.

A BBC news report before Christmas mentioned Thames Water having to clear a 150 foot long blockage of impacted fat from a sewer in Soho. Mmmmm.
 
Going back to the original post, a couple of Christmases ago a local News program (could have been Cetnral News, Granada Today or Calendar [YTV] those are the ones I watch with any regularity anyway...) carried a plea form Severn Trent not to pour turkey fat down the drain since it clogs the sewrwer and then showed film of men with shovels peeling waxed fat off sewer walls and sticking it in wheel barrows, where it was being removed onto lorries to land fill. So there is an element of truth to it....

maybe someone would care to contact STW press office :D
 
Originally posted by Hugo Cornwall

it was being removed onto lorries to land fill

Ugh!!

Imagine in years to come the seepage from the ground on a hot day!
 
Somewhere in Essex there's a warehouse sat in the middle of a field. The owners of this warehouse buy the old ovens off of electrical retailers which they take away from your house when they install a new one. The ovens are then cleaned and sold onto the second hand market.

The ex had occassion to visit this place once and said that the stench was unbelievable as ovens which had not been cleaned for 5,10,15 years were hosed out. Fat and grease lay in puddles everywhere, and as it was June/July time the pace was covered in flies. :cross eye
 
"]*it's lamb, allegedly, minced up with spices and formed back into that huge lump, which rotates on a skewer in front of a gas flamey thing for weeks on end, slowly dripping fat into the catching thingy beneath, until it's all been sliced away. Then it's replaced with another huge meaty lump thing. Does anyone know the name for that, btw?[/B] "

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It's called an 'elephants leg'.:D

And while we're at it, sausages are pigs fingers. FACT.
 
I like donner kerbabs too (when I can afford them. Im skint but know many generous takeaways)

I know generous butchers too, who will give you a bag of beef trimmings and the like. simply cut the meat off the fat, and grill to remove the remainder. makes good stews and stir frys.

Those of you who feed the birds will like the fat. (and its a great excuse to scrounge beef trimmings. same as doggies with a stew bone.)

I always use lots of soda crystals to keep my sink/drains clear. old fashioned but effective.
 
Got It! Waste cooking oils are re-cycled but only after extraction from the fryer - not from the soil pipes.
 
indeed indeed about the birds homo aves.... we usually have a lump hanging form the obelisk!

Kath
 
Read the second part with caution-contains information not s

Peni said:
the fajita, which is beef scraps

Just for the sake of completeness, fajitas actually refers to the cut of beef generally known (here in the USA) as flank steak. IIRC it's basically the diaphram. So chicken fajitas makes one wonder....

Some fatty materials (locally anyway) end up in at a rendering plant. This place processes just about any animal material into things like bone meal, animal by-products, and fats. The local animal shelter used to send the euthanized animals there. A hatchery would send culled baby chicks, still alive. And of course the matter from grease traps in 3 counties end up there. Some of the animal by-products end up in cheap dog food. Which explains the dog has an allergic reaction to certain brands of dog food.
 
Euthanized animals from a shelter sent to a rendering plant?!?! :eek!!!!: That's pretty horrifying.

While we're on the subject of scary fat-related things: there's a prescription-only pill, whose name conveniently escapes me, which will render any fat you eat indigestible. Translation: you change your underwear a lot. I know someone who took them for a few weeks (prescribed by a doctor) because she was desperate to lose weight. It caused her to cut down on the fat she ate, but even when she was living on skim milk and Cheerios, she said, she was still running to the bathroom all the time (and was afraid to fart!) so she chucked them away. Was that ever marketed in Britain or was that only in North America?
 
Leaferne, you can go to this site

http://www.fda.gov/cvm/efoi/dfchart.htm

and see if your favorite brands contain any sodium pentobarbital, the euthanasia drug. Of course, they find it in concetrations of parts per BILLION, and it takes 35-45 mg/kg to act as a euthanasia agent. So I doubt it would actually hurt your animals. But yeah, the rendering plant is a horrific place.
 
Leaferne said:
While we're on the subject of scary fat-related things: there's a prescription-only pill, whose name conveniently escapes me,

Xenical- it is prescribed here in the UK, as well.
 
Seems very dubious to me. The body needs `some` fat intake, and `some` stored fat.
 
Slim, farting, excessive bowel activity- sound like my ideal life. ;)
Where can I buy some?
 
Kind of reminds me of Antabuse; there's this conditioning thing going on. It sounds absolutely vile; I think I'd rather have a little extra padding than rectal incontinence. :cross eye
 
<Shrugs> Im sure there is a market for such a `scatalogical` lifestyle.
 
Sorry I seem to have wandered onto the Viz website by mistake !!:D
 
Leaferne said:
. Was that ever marketed in Britain or was that only in North America?

My sister's best friend took it (in the UK) but didn't cut down on her fat intake at all, very messy! She still managed to get plenty of action from blokes picked up through the lonely hearts ads in the local free ads paper- guess desperate men aren't that fussy :cross eye

EDIT have thought maybe it was a bonus for some men?!
 
I remember reading one of the 'true stories' in a mens magazine.

It was written by someone who had worked temporarily at a place that disposed of large dead animals. The permanent workers were less sensitive about their job than the rest of us.

One day, a dead gorrila was brought in from the local zoo. The keeper was with the gorrila and in tears asked that the body was treated in a dignified manner.

Having been assured that this would be done, the keeper said his goodbye and left.

Hoots broke out from the workers at this rare opportunity, and the gorrila was stuffed, given a name and was present all the time and often in embrassingly situations.

Eventually the keeper found out that his beloved gorilla had not been treated as he had hoped and spoke with the companies management.

People were told off, and the gorrila disappeared.

Months later the author, having left and started a new job, passed by the company for a chat. In an office sat the stuffed gorilla, hidden from management, but still available for 'office parties'.
 
I thought that an exccelent use for a dead gorrilla!

Its better than the `Bearer` in a local shop, unnaturaly upright and with a tray in his paws.....
 
Sewer Fat

W. D. Chesney, M. D. was an elderly, retired physician and old-time Spiritualist who wrote on a fairly regular basis for FATE and for Ray Palmer's poor man's version MYSTIC in the 1950s and early 1960s before he eventually died in his late 90s.

In one of his MYSTIC articles Chesney claimed that at the turn of the 20th Century, or shortly before, major American meat packers used to have skimming boards in place down in the major sewers near their production plants, to skim animal fats off the surface of the water for re-use.

Thank God, Chesney wrote, the government eventually wroite FINIS to that one.

This was the only reference to this revolting practice that I had ever previously seen, until now, and I've long wondered if the story was true, or else (I rather hoped) something the Good Doctor had dreamed up in his dottage.

In fact whenever I recall this particular story (which is altogether TOO often!) I find myself deciding for the latter explanation.

But after reading this thread I'm by no means so certain.
 
lordmongrove said:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/bus-sized-fatberg-threatened-london-streets-151022052.html#qlRguki

Mega-lard

That's pretty gross! :eek:
 
Britain's biggest 'fatberg' removed from London sewer
Page last updated at 08:10 GMT, Tuesday, 6 August 2013 09:10 UK

Britain's biggest ever 'fatberg' has been removed from a London sewer.
Thames Water say a "bus-sized lump" of food fat mixed with wet wipes formed in drains under London Road in Kingston upon Thames. :shock:

The blockage was discovered after residents in nearby flats complained they couldn't flush their toilets.
Thames Water believe if it wasn't removed it could have led to sewage flooding homes, streets and businesses. :nooo:

Gordon Hailwood, Waste Contracts supervisor for Thames Water said: "Given we've got the biggest sewers and this is the biggest 'fatberg' we've encountered, we reckon it has to be the biggest in British history.

"While we've removed greater volumes of fat from under central London in the past, we've never seen a single, congealed lump of lard this big clogging our sewers before."

He added: "The sewer was almost completely clogged with over 15 tonnes of fat. If we hadn't discovered it in time, raw sewage could have started spurting out of manholes across the whole of Kingston.
"It was so big it damaged the sewer and repairs will take up to six weeks."

CCTV investigations in London Road found the mound of fat had reduced the sewer to just five per cent of its normal capacity.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/23586290
 
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