and filled with a saturated salt brine for preservation. The runners are then sold to a company which processes natural casings by grading and packaging them to create finished units called hanks.

Natural casings are produced and sold almost exclusively by the hank which is a unit of measure that is 91 meters long. A hank can consist of a varying number of strands (individual pieces of casing) which vary in length from 2 meters (which is the shortest length sold for commercial use) to as long as 28 meters. Each casing manufacturer has