The word "cotton" is often taken to be synonymous with cotton lint. However, the farm product, seed cotton, also contains the by-product cottonseed..Of lesser value than lint, cottonseed is typically crushed to separate oil from meal. Cottonseed oil,which competes with other vegetable oils, is typically used for human consumption and sometimes for soap manufacturing and other industrial uses such as plastic and pharmaceuticals. Cottonseed meal, which competes with other meals, is typically used as animal feed, while hulls or husks (the outer part of the seed) are either used to generate energy for the processing facility or are blended with meal for animal feed; less often hulls and husks are used as fertilizer. Linters—which are low-quality lintleft over from the ginning process—are used in various manufacturing products, including yam, plastic, and filling material. Sometimes cottonseed is used unprocessed, directly for animal feed, especially in the dairy industry.13 This paper discusses the two key by-products: oil and meal.
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