§ Viscount Exmouthasked Her Majesty's Government:
What disposal methods are being used to stockpile rendered offal from the BSE eradication scheme; and whether they can confirm that such offal has not been or will not be dumped at sea. [HL157]
§ The Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Lord Donoughue)Commission Regulation 716/96 requires that the carcases of cattle purchased under the Over Thirty Months Scheme (OTMS) are disposed of by incineration or rendered and destroyed; broadly similar provisions are contained in the Commission legislation governing the Selective and Offspring Culls. All these schemes are open only to animals showing no clinical symptoms of BSE.
A small proportion of carcases, including all offspring cull carcases, are incinerated direct and the ash landfilled in appropriately licensed sites. The majority of OTMS and Selective Cull carcases, however, are rendered and the resultant material—meat-and-bone meal (MBM) and tallow—is currently being safely and securely stored pending destruction.
160WASome OTMS MBM is being burned in an appropriately authorised high temperature waste incinerator, and a number of renderers are burning tallow as a fuel. The Intervention Board Executive Agency, which has responsibility for the operation of the OTMS, has recently announced the award of the first large-scale contract for incineration of MBM with energy recovery. The board continue to negotiate with a small number of potential service providers about meeting the balance of their requirement for MBM incineration capacity.
The dumping of waste at sea is governed by regional and global treaties. In particular, the OSPAR convention on the Protection of the Maritime Environment of the north-east Atlantic prescribes stringent rules which preclude any dumping of rendered material at sea. Therefore no MBM has been or will be dumped at sea.