Volume 10: Economic Impact and International Trade
4. Where did the economic consequences of BSE finally fall?
Businesses which were severely affected

4.21 Knackers were less able to adapt to the changes which occurred after the SBO bans. As with slaughterhouses, much of what knackers had formerly sold to renderers or kennels they now had to pay to have removed from their premises. Although it appears that they attempted to pass these increased costs and losses back to farmers, they were largely unsuccessful in doing so. Many farmers turned to alternative disposal methods such as on-farm burial. ¹

4.22 With the introduction of the human SBO ban in 1989, head boners were put in a difficult position. They were paying slaughterhouses for heads and, in a labour-intensive operation, removing low-value meat scraps and then having to pay renderers to take away the useless remainder. BSE also seems to have affected the demand for the meat that they produced.

4.23 The reduction in demand for head meat and the increase in slaughterhouses performing their own head-boning had a detrimental impact on the business of specialist head-boning plants, and this was made worse by the further restrictions introduced in 1995.