COMMONS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 3 November 2003)

§ Lord Whitty
My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 8. This concerns another area that we discussed in this House at Third Reading in particular, when a definition of "composting" was added to this part of the Bill.
After due consideration, the Government decided to take steps to remove that definition, principally because the definition appears elsewhere—mainly in the EU Animal By-Products Regulation. It is obviously important that we take all aspects of biosecurity extremely seriously, and that argument was put forward in relation to the previous debate in this House. We have no intention of bringing forward any measure that would increase the risk to public or animal health. In fact, the Government have acted positively to reduce the risks associated with, for example, the composting of catering waste.
The term "composting" is used in the provisions of the Bill only as an example of the types of measure that a strategy under Clauses 17 to 20 could include to help to achieve the relevant landfill targets. The term "composting" does not appear in other parts of the Bill. Of course, it is a requirement that, in diverting waste from landfill, relevant legislation must also be complied with. Therefore, if biodegradable waste were to be composted, any relevant restrictions on that process would need to be followed.
The Government have never seen this Bill as a primary vehicle for controlling composting generally or composting catering waste in particular. The other legislation—in particular, as I said, the EU Animal By-Products Regulation, which came into force in May this year—covers the appropriate controls, including 530 those on the composting of animal by-products and waste food from food factories and retail premises. That regulation requires that animal by-products are submitted to heating to 70 degrees centigrade for one hour before being composted. That is now the standard endorsed by the EU Scientific Veterinary Committee as sufficient to destroy all damaging pathogens.
With regard specifically to catering waste, the EU regulation allows member states to introduce national standards for premises where only catering waste is to be treated, provided the controls deliver a similar level of protection. An independent assessment commissioned by the Government into the risk to public and animal health associated with the composting of catering waste concluded that, provided certain treatment standards are met and suitable controls are in place, the risks to human and animal health from the composting or biogas digestion of catering waste containing meat are acceptably low. The findings of that risk assessment enabled the department to draw up its own animal by-product regulations to replace the Animal By-Products Order. Those regulations contain controls and treatment standards for composting catering waste that adequately safeguard animal health. They came into force in July this year following, as I explained, the coming into force of the EU Animal By-Products Regulation.
Now that both the EU Animal By-Products Regulation and the UK By-Products Regulations 2003 are in place, and now that they include appropriate time and temperature requirements for composting, there is no need for a separate definition to deal with composting in this very limited sense in the Bill.
I should also add that, from a practical point of view, it would be almost impossible to work to the definition that was in the Bill when it left this House. Heating biodegradable waste to 98 degrees for a minimum of two hours would not only render the resulting material fairly useless as compost; it could also result in combustion, with the waste bursting into flames.
As I said, the Government wish to do all they can to reduce the risks associated with animal disease. They also wish to drive waste disposal up the waste hierarchy. To achieve both, it is necessary for the composting of catering waste to be an option available to waste producers and managers, provided the controls are in place to minimise the risks. The Government believe that the legislation now on the statute book in relation to the animal by-products legislation does that and that, therefore, a different definition in this Bill is unnecessary. I hope that the House will be able to support the Commons in this amendment.

§ Lord Dixon-Smith
My Lords, the recent foot and mouth outbreak is fresh in all our memories. It lay behind the insertion of our amendment, which sought to raise the temperature of composting, into the Bill as it arrived in this House. Despite three inquiries of 531 various forms, the cause of that outbreak was never specifically identified. However, even an independent inquiry into the 1960s outbreak could not identify the cause of that outbreak, although the report that followed that inquiry included the cryptic wording that it was almost certainly due to the importation of the virus in meat bones that had come from abroad. One has to make a similar assumption about the recent outbreak, although it is an assumption.
As a result of the recent outbreak, we do know the consequences of the arrival in this country of the virus, which certainly does not normally exist here. The cost to the nation's economy was far larger than the cost to the agricultural industry, and that should be borne in mind. Therefore, there was a very good reason for seeking absolute biosecurity in the waste disposal process, and specifically in the composting process.
I have received some interesting correspondence from the Minister's department on this matter. Some of it I considered slightly strange. The noble Lord has repeated the possibility of the occurrence of spontaneous combustion if we heat compost to 98 degrees centigrade. Spontaneous combustion can take place in peculiar circumstances, but I am sure that if one produced compost in what I would call monitored circumstances, 98 degrees centigrade would not be a problem.
It was also suggested that heating compost to 98 degrees would reduce it to a sludge. My reaction to that is that those who wrote that paper could never have been in the kitchen when their wives were cooking. A joint is put into an oven at a much higher temperature than that—probably double that. I know that my wife bakes cakes in the oven at far higher temperatures than that; they stay in the oven for a longer time and come out as something that is wholly edible, very refreshing and delightful.
One needs some realism. As for sterilising the compost material, so destroying the beneficial bacteria that will make the process work, one could easily answer that by heating the compost at:he end of the process. Be that as it may, at Third Reading we asked for an absolute assurance. The Minister was unable to give it and I accept that it would probably never be possible for him to give such an assurance because I suspect that most scientists would deny that there can be absolute security. The fact is that composting, along with recycling, is at the core of the Government's policy for reducing waste going to landfill. Therefore, it has to be accepted. We shall have to look at matters in that light.
The noble Lord has mentioned the European directive and the European risk assessment that the Government are right to follow, but it is a risk assessment. It does not say that the risk is zero. There is mention of once in 120 years there being a possible risk. With a bit of luck, veterinary science will improve matters long before we get to 120 years. I hope that we shall have an interval of 20 or 30 years before the next inadvertent importation of the foot and mouth virus to this country.
I recognise that we shall have to accept the amendment, otherwise we put this country at an artificial disadvantage vis-à-vis our European 532 neighbours in regard to the waste disposal process. They like to call us the "dirty man of Europe", but we are not. I do not think that we should be at such a competitive disadvantage. However, we have to acknowledge that there is still a risk. I hope that it is a very slight one and I hope that veterinary science will come to our rescue before we have another problem. It is a wish and a hope but not a certainty.

§ Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer
My Lords, I am slightly confused by the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, on the analogy of cooking and composting. I can assure him that in some households often the husband, the partner or the children do the cooking.
On the amendment, as the Minister will know, I am relieved. I argued long and hard through the Water Bill to achieve definitions more in line with European definitions so that we all talk about the same thing. I am pleased to see that the amendment brings us closer to what will be a common understanding in the directive. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, that one worry is that compost is adequately treated, for all the reasons that he gave.
Another worry—I am glad that the Minister's assurances in another place are on record—concerns reassuring the waste disposal authorities that biodegradable waste can be composted and that incineration will not be the only acceptable method, indeed the first method, that is considered for disposal. Post the foot and mouth disease outbreak that was the reaction; that to be safe we had better start looking at incinerating everything. Of course, it would be disastrous to incinerate all materials that, if treated correctly, could be composted.
I gather that the Government will undertake a research programme into the reduction of the biodegradable content achieved by each treatment type and that Defra will set guidelines on the different types of treatment. However, I am unclear about the timescale in which those guidelines will be issued. Are we looking at a couple of years or more than that? Perhaps the Minister could give an idea of the timescale. If people are to set up composting methods and are to set aside areas for that, they would welcome Defra giving guidance on that in the near future.

§ Lord Whitty
My Lords, in response to the last point of the noble Baroness, the department will be giving guidance on the immediate application in the near future, but clearly the research programmes are not complete. Some of them will run for more than a year so it will be some time before we could consider whether we need to change that guidance in the light of further research. Clearly, further research may be necessary. The immediate guidelines, based on knowledge as of now, will come out in spring next year.
On the diversion of the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, into his wife's cooking, I am not sure that she will entirely appreciate the analogy with compost. Nevertheless, I am sure her cakes are lovely. The noble 533 Lord says that he has been engaged in some strange communications with my department; sometimes I am as well. The fact is that there is a danger—it may be a remote one—of combustion at that level, but the more important issue is whether one destroys the effectiveness of the compost and changes the nature of the compost at that level. All the scientific and veterinary advice is that the 70 degree figure for most purposes in the European regulations would apply. As the noble Lord and the noble Baroness recognise, our industry will benefit if everyone operates to the same standards. That is what will happen via the Animal By-Products Regulations.
On the foot and mouth position, while, regrettably, we do not know from where the virus came, we know the original farm where it was ingested. At that point the existing regulations were not being observed. It is important for farmers and for everyone else that we observe the new regulations and observe them throughout Europe. That may well result in the outcome that the noble Lord seeks; namely, that it will be many decades before we are visited by such a terrible disease again. This Bill is not the appropriate place to define that; since the Bill was last discussed in this House we have defined it elsewhere. I commend Commons Amendment No. 8 to the House.