Just because it's Tallow, doesn't mean it's non-toxic: 5 questions you need to ask your tallow supplier
Over the last few years, there have been a number of times a tallow supplier has reached out to us to “support us” in growing our business. Some of them have offered to render our tallow for us, while others have offered to take over the whole process. I’ll be honest with you: the rendering process is time- and labour-intensive, and we’ve taken a good, hard look at what it would mean to outsource it. The problem is that what we found goes against so many of our company's values.
The frustrating thing is that we want the best for our health and our children's health. For so many of us on the scrunchy to crunchy spectrum, our non-toxic origin story starts there: our family; possibly with some kind of autoimmune issue, or symptoms that aren’t quite strong enough to raise medical red flags but are enough to disrupt your life, or even just a heightened awareness of what conventional consumption is doing to our bodies and our planet.
Whatever your story is, we’ve all put effort in to make sure the decisions we make for ourselves and our families are the best decisions possible at any given moment about nutrition, health, education… really all of it!
So when we buy a product that’s marketed as all natural, it should be all natural. And tallow, in particular, has a reputation as a 100% natural, non-toxic alternative to conventional skincare, and the bonus is that it's packed with vitamins and omegas our skin needs and thrives on. But as it turns out, not all tallow skincare is created equal. If your priority is truly non-toxic skincare, you deserve to understand this.
Just because a product is labelled tallow-based does not automatically mean it is clean or non-toxic. And when we looked more deeply into these tallow suppliers, we realized just how corrupt the tallow industry can be.
The first company that reached out to us offered two things: to supply us with tallow and to pre-render it for us, so we didn’t have to. On the surface, that sounds amazing. The thing is, when asked a few basic questions about where the tallow was coming from, this company couldn’t provide us with substantial answers - meaning they could barely answer the question at all.
Here are the questions we asked, and ones that you should absolutely be asking any tallow company, because it directly affects the final product and how your skin will respond:
- Are the cows grass-fed AND finished?
- Is the tallow only from suet?
- Is anything added to the tallow?
- Does the tallow go through a bleaching or deodorizing process?
- How is it rendered, and what containers are used in the rendering process?
Tallow that comes from grass-fed and finished cows will automatically be cleaner and more nutrient-dense than grain-fed and even grass-fed cows. We actually wrote a whole blog post about this, and it’s worth a read.
Skincare quality tallow also needs to be made only from suet, which is a very hard fat found around the kidneys and liver of a cow - it’s not the same as fatty off-cuts, which may be used for cooking but should absolutely not end up on your skin. If you’ve broken out or had acne flare-ups from tallow, chances are it was made with fatty off-cuts or had other things added to it! For a tallow supplier to not be able (or not want) to answer these questions raises huge red flags - these are not companies that value the consumers' needs, health or outcome.
The last two questions we listed are about the rendering process. Well-rendered tallow should be odourless. It should also be rendered in stainless-steel food-grade pots and bowls. Fat isn’t a neutral carrier; it absorbs and binds whatever it’s exposed to at heat. Because of this, the environment in which tallow is rendered becomes part of the final product. If the rendering process is compromised, the tallow is compromised as well. No amount of marketing language can change that.
When we spoke to the supplier about their rendering process, we learned it was mass rendered in plastic bags, which means that although their ingredients are pure and natural, and the list of ingredients on the final product might look good, there are microplastics, carcinogens, and endocrine-disrupting forever chemicals cooked into that tallow.
This isn’t an isolated issue for that one supplier either. Many commercial suppliers bleach and deodorize their tallow in massive batches. Their raw material is often not suet, but instead a mixture of generic fat trimmings from various parts of the animal. As I’ve mentioned, these trimmings were never intended for facial or body care and do not carry the same vitamin profile or stability as suet.
The heavy bleaching and deodorizing process is used to correct problems created upstream. Tallow skincare should come from suet, nothing else.
Our passion for tallow began with a simple intention: to find a natural skincare solution that is genuinely non-toxic and rooted in ancestral practices of body care and sustainability. That intention has never changed.
This is why we continue to render our tallow in-house, with a small team, and in small batches using stainless steel. We’re okay with it being a little more labour-intensive because we think it’s important to have a hand in that process.
Nothing is outsourced in the tallow you receive from us, and nothing is rushed, stripped, bleached or chemically altered.
You can see it in our Naked line, which exists to provide nourishing skincare to the most sensitive skin. It demonstrates what properly rendered tallow looks and smells like in both whipped and balm form without added scent. The Naked Face Tallow Whip contains only two ingredients: in-house rendered grass-fed and finished suet tallow and cold-pressed hemp seed oil.
That is all.
This is ancestral skincare.
Your skin is your largest organ; what you put on it becomes part of you, and we think you deserve the best.
We also think you deserve transparency.
With love,
The Genesis Tallow Team