Turkey leftovers not quite ready to defeat oil sheikhs

A company came into Carthage, Missouri, a few years ago with a scheme to turn turkey parts into heating oil. The technology seemed so sublime that Discover magazine gave it a splash.

But carnivores, jobless southern Missourians and reluctant foreign-oil consumers have been disappointed by what’s transpired. Earlier this year, the plant stopped accepting bones and feathers from a neighboring Butterball plant.

A Pitch writer and photographer traveled to Carthage in 2005 to take a look at the plant, which sat in an industrial bottoms. The technology seemed pretty awesome. But people who lived downwind from the facility complained that it produced the odor of death wrapped in a baby hyena’s diaper.

“It’s not an odor problem we have here,” Mayor Jim Woestman told a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter in 2008. “It’s a stink problem.”