Hogs

http://www.christienmeindertsma.com/index.php?/books/pig-05049/
This lady, an artist from Holland, made a catalog of everything that any single pig might be used for. She found 185 things, ranging from schnitzel (unsurprising), to stents used in human hearts (somewhat more surprising). Much of this is due to the amazingly versatile characteristics of gelatin; this dynamite Spiegel article points out that beer, red wine, and even bread contain important swine-derived additives.

On first glance, this is a somewhat unnerving discovery. No one likes to be told that there's pig in his beer. (According to the Wikipedia article, gelatin is sometimes used in beer to make it "clearer.") On the other hand, this isn't a particularly surprising thing. When the shampoo lady comes on TV and tells you about all those great proteins that make your hair stronger, it's logical that the proteins had to come from somewhere (in this case, from the boiled hair of the pig). The fact of the matter is that we like having protein in our shampoo, we like having our bread dough even, and we like it when our porcelain (the name is just an etymological coincidence) has a special shiny translucence derived from the calcium phosphate in Wilbur's bones. A modern society, with its neverending quest to innovate and make any given product just a little better for everyday use, harnesses resources from wherever it may find them. That we have so much of this renewable grunting natural resource should not be cause for alarm; it is a way to point out that we simply have developed a way to channel even the most useless things into something, well, useful. And as our Spiegel correspondent points out, in this we are not so very different from the Indians.

However, I usually drink unfiltered beer.

For those of you with additional interest in this subject, here's an interview with Meindertsma.