After Lengthy Court Battle, Company Agrees To Stop Rendering Animal Parts in Southeast LA

Following a nearly two-year court battle, a company in the city of Vernon has reached a settlement with air quality regulators and agreed to stop rendering raw animal parts.

As part of the agreement with the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD), Baker Commodities Inc. will pay the agency $400,000 and surrender its rendering permits within two weeks.

In recent years, Baker’s facility on Bandini Boulevard next to the L.A. River converted animal remains collected from meat processing plants, grocery stores, and butcher shops into pet food and other household items.

Photographs taken by AQMD Inspector Dillon Harris during multiple inspections of Baker’s rendering facility in Vernon in 2022. Baker later filed an emergency motion asking a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to restrain the AQMD from publishing the inspector’s photos and to take them down from AQMD hearing board videos on YouTube. The judge denied it in October 2022.

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Dillon Harris

Screen shots from YouTube video of Sept. 27, 2022 AQMD Commission meeting

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Dillon Harris

Screen shots from YouTube video of Sept. 27, 2022 AQMD Commission…

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