Volume 14: Responsibilities for Human and Animal Health
5. The treatment of material deemed unfit for human consumption
Introduction

5.1 In addition to the controls on the production of animal feeds, described in Chapter 6, the use of material which was unfit for human consumption but which could be fed to animals was also controlled to prevent it spreading disease to animals. The controls required that all animal material intended to be fed to animals should be treated so as to reduce the presence in the material of harmful diseases or other organisms.

5.2 Much of this material was processed by the rendering industry into its two main products: fat, known as tallow, and protein, in the form of greaves or meat and bone meal (MBM). Early epidemiological investigations identified MBM in cattle feed as the likely vector of BSE: see vol. 3: The Early Years, 1986-88. It was postulated that some change or changes in the rendering process in the early 1980s had permitted the disease to arise, earlier processes presumably having been able to inactivate it. Once the disease had arisen, the incorporation into cattle feed of rendered cattle remains, including the remains of infected cattle, caused BSE to spread. Various suggestions were made about what it was that had changed so as to allow the disease to emerge. This is discussed in ch. 3, vol. 2: Science.

5.3 The identification of unfit material at the slaughterhouse and its treatment there is described in Chapter 3. Chapter 5 describes the framework of controls for handling such unfit material once it had left the slaughterhouse and where it originated elsewhere than the slaughterhouse; and for regulating the rendering industry. It is important to remember that the rendering industry also handled material which was fit for human consumption, from which was produced some edible fats, such as dripping.

5.4 The animal feed industry is discussed in Chapter 6 and the pollution control and waste management regime, which applied to knackers and renderers as well as to other industries, in Chapter 8. For descriptions of the operations of knacker's yards, hunt kennels, renderers and other related industries, see vol. 13: Industry Processes and Controls.