Volume 1: Findings and Conclusions
Executive Summary of the Report of the Inquiry
12. Pollution and waste control

• MAFF was directly responsible for disposing of cattle carcasses from the compulsory slaughter scheme. Major problems included the large volume of carcasses and initial serious underestimation of the numbers that would arise. MAFF handled this difficult and unpopular disposal task energetically and competently.
• The disposal of SBO material was not MAFF's direct responsibility and was less straightforward to manage. Initially this material did not constitute waste as such because it was a marketable product for rendering into tallow and MBM. It did not become controlled waste, to be disposed of only at a licensed destination, until after the animal SBO ban and SEAC advice that the protein product of SBO should not be used as an agricultural fertiliser.
• Other forms of waste included effluent passing down drains to sewers and rivers. None of the usual precautions or conditions attached by water authorities to discharges would have inactivated the BSE agent.
• Blood, slaughterhouse and rendering plant waste, including that from plants that rendered SBO, and sewage sludge from works handling their effluents, might lawfully be spread as agricultural fertiliser.
• Some of the failures to identify and address these matters promptly can be attributed to the defective state of environmental regulatory action at the time, and the transitional turmoil of measures to rectify this.
• General waste disposal systems as a potential transmission pathway for BSE received scant attention from those handling BSE prior to 1996. The matter was not referred to or addressed by the Southwood Working Party, the Tyrrell Committee or SEAC. All of them advocated a systematic review of the destination of all bovine materials. Had this been carried out, it might have identified waste disposal issues.