Volume 5: Animal Health, 1989-96
3. Introduction of the animal SBO ban
Voluntary animal SBO ban
UKASTA recommends a voluntary ban on SBO in animal feed
Observance of the voluntary animal SBO ban
Renderers' cooperation with UKASTA's voluntary ban
MAFF's continued opposition following the introduction of the voluntary ban

UKASTA recommends a voluntary ban on SBO in animal feed

3.74 The Bovine Offal (Prohibition) Regulations came into force in England and Wales on 13 November 1989, and banned the use of SBOs for human consumption. ¹ The introduction of the Regulations is examined in vol. 6: Human Health, 1989-96.

3.75 UKASTA responded to the ban on 9 November 1989 by issuing Feed Circular 454 to its members. The circular set out details of the Government's human SBO ban. It recommended that in the light of this ban, compound feed members should make the exclusion of SBO a condition of contracts for the purchase of all MBM for incorporation into compound feedstuffs. The circular said that UKASTA believed a voluntary ban would 'help allay consumers' fears about the wholesomeness of animal products, and would protect the image of the feed and animal production industry'. ²

3.76 Mr Reed explained to the Inquiry why UKASTA had considered it necessary to disregard MAFF's advice and introduce such a ban:

. . . my personal view is that it was, at that time, the reason we stood out so strongly and it does rather prove the exception to the general rule, the reason was more to do with public perception, our understanding of public perception and the views being reflected by customers. There was also an unease about the risk of including something in animal feed when we had no idea whether any potentially dangerous material might travel through livestock and eventually end up on a human food plate. But that unease was, I think, not the main factor. ³

3.77 In a statement to the Inquiry, Mr Meldrum stated that he was unconvinced that such measures were necessary:

It was a matter of judgement whether the SBO ban should be extended to pet food and all other animal food and it was my view at the time that there was no compelling reason to recommend a total ban on the SBOs, although I kept an open mind on the subject and did ask others for their expert opinion on the subject. ⁴

Observance of the voluntary animal SBO ban

3.78 Mr Reed told the Inquiry that UKASTA intended that the voluntary ban would be as comprehensive as possible within the feed industry. However, its effectiveness was dependent on the cooperation of individual feed manufacturers and their relationships with their suppliers. ⁵

3.79 In 1997 a report prepared for MAFF stated that UKASTA represented 90 per cent of the UK's feed compounders and its members produced 67 per cent of livestock feed used in the UK, the remainder being produced by home-mixing and non-UKASTA members. ⁶ The Inquiry is not aware what proportion of feed compounders were members of UKASTA in 1989, but it is assumed that it did not differ dramatically from this figure.

3.80 Mr Foxcroft of PDM told the Inquiry that:

All the major feed companies in the UK (BOCMS, Dalgety, Bibby and Pauls), accounting for a large proportion of animal feed production had all required SBO-free MBM since the end of 1989 and free from fallen stock since March 1990. ⁷

3.81 However not all manufacturers observed the voluntary ban. On 13 February 1990 Mr Foxcroft wrote to Mr TonyTaylor of Dalgety Agriculture Limited, a major feed compounder, indicating that a significant proportion of the animal feed manufacturers it was supplying were not observing the voluntary ban:

We still have approximately 25% of our meal customers not requiring the removal of the tissues proscribed from human foods under the Bovine Offal (Prohibition) Regulations 1989 . . . ⁸

3.82 A note circulated within MAFF by Mr Lawrence on 6 February 1990 noted that:

The avenues for sales of meat and bonemeal containing specified offals seems to be diminishing. Prosper De Mulder reckon that only 25% of the purchases by compounders are for this particular meat and bone meal and that this will go within a month or so. ⁹

3.83 On 14 March 1990, Mr Alan Sadler of UKRA wrote to Mr Spurr of the Meat and Livestock Commission stating:

In general larger buyers have insisted that the specified offals should be excluded, but at the same time many of the smaller buyers, who account for about 20% of the total sales tonnage, have been prepared to buy with the specified offals included.

However, continued adverse media interest in meat and bone meal's alleged involvement with B.S.E has led to an overall reduction both in contracted deliveries and in total sales with the result that nationally there are substantial stocks of meat and bone meal in [store] and the industry is faced with a rapidly reducing value of the commodity. ¹⁰

3.84 The lack of demand for SBO meant that its price fell, making it a cheaper raw material for conversion into MBM. A two-tier pricing system developed for SBO-free MBM and MBM derived from SBO. A draft paper prepared by Mr Lawrence in early June 1990 stated that there was 'still a small market for meat and bone meal processed from specified offal, but the price is well below that of other material'. ¹¹ This market was, however, a diminishing one. UKRA representatives provided Mr Gummer, Mr Meldrum and Mr Lawrence with an update at a meeting on 11 July 1990:

The UKASTA requirement that meat and bonemeal produced from specified offals should not be included in animal rations had virtually removed the market for this material. The large renderers were storing the material at present, in the hope that a market would be found for it. Otherwise, it would be necessary to use land fill for disposal. ¹²

Renderers' cooperation with UKASTA's voluntary ban

3.85 Compounders' compliance with the voluntary ban depended on their being able to obtain SBO-free MBM from their suppliers. This led feed compounders to contract on terms that MBM supplied would be 'SBO-free'. For instance, in November 1989 BOCM Silcock Ltd requested that the following clause be included in its purchase contract with PDM:

The Meat and Bone meal supplied in fulfilment of this contract excludes totally cattle offal from the following organs: brain, spinal cord, thymus, spleen, tonsils and intestines. ¹³

3.86 When asked how common the inclusion of such clauses was, Mr Reed of UKASTA said:

Well, at some stage we endeavoured to survey our members in the feed manufacturing sector and find out. And although I do not think we now have the records within UKASTA, I think the responses we got were that a very, very large percentage of all those feed manufacturers within UKASTA were seeking those assurances; and on the whole I think at the time we carried out the survey they were getting them. ¹⁴

3.87 On 5 December 1989 Mr Foxcroft of PDM sent a circular to 'customers requiring SBO guarantees'. The letter included the following:

In view of the Government's move on 13^th November 1989 banning certain specified bovine offals (brain, spinal cord, spleen, thymus, tonsils and intestines) from use in the preparation of food for sale for human consumption; the recommendations made by UKASTA to its members in Feed Circular No. 454 and many requests from our customers; we now wish to inform you of the position regarding all meat meals and meat and bone meals produced by the De Mulder Group.

Since the 13^th November 1989 our staff have visited all suppliers of raw materials asking them to give an undertaking that the above proscribed tissues will be separated from the materials we collect for processing into our meals. As you might expect this has provoked a range of responses but suffice it to say that all existing suppliers are now complying with our requests, or intend to do so once they have obtained necessary equipment and completed staff training. This, we feel, is not unreasonable and can confirm that all our products will conform with the UKASTA recommendation. Withdrawal of these materials has already commenced. This will be a gradual process which should be completed by the end of January 1990. Active monitoring at the abattoirs and our plants will be carried out by ourselves. Should any supplier be found not matching their undertaking with appropriate actions then their materials will cease to be used in De Mulder Group protein meals. ¹⁵

3.88 UKRA issued interim guidelines to its members on 13 November 1989 on how they should deal with UKASTA's recommendations to its members. Following the meeting with MAFF on 16 November 1989, and an informal meeting with UKASTA on 21 November 1989, UKRA managed to secure agreement with UKASTA that:

1. They would accept that it was totally impracticable for either [UKRA] or the meat industry to give cast iron guarantees that the offals would all be excluded. They would however agree to buy on the basis of 'substantially free' on a best effort basis.

2. UKASTA buyers who were present also agreed that in view of the problems being encountered by firms seeking to export meat and bone meal within the BSE situation they would take all the U.K. production. ¹⁶

3.89 On 13 February 1990 Mr Foxcroft of PDM sent a letter to Mr Taylor of Dalgety Agriculture Limited. He said:

Following my letter to you in early December regarding specified bovine offals, BSE and our meat and bone meals; I am writing now to confirm that all the actions we indicated would be taken have now been implemented with the exception of our Hartshill factory.

We still have approximately 25% of our meal customers not requiring the removal of the tissues proscribed from human foods under the Bovine Offal (Prohibition) Regulations 1989, and therefore, continue to process these at that plant. However no meat and bone is, or will be, supplied to your company from Hartshill.

We can, therefore, confirm that all meal supplied to yourselves is produced entirely from raw materials from which the specified offals have been excluded before collection at source. ¹⁷

3.90 Against this backdrop, on 26 February 1990 UKRA issued a notice to its members. It recounted UKRA's and UKASTA's agreement on MBM, and said:

At that point in time therefore all members were being given specific advice of the position and had it been taken up it is very likely that the industry would be in a more healthy position than it is in today:- the problem being that overall our members have not made a concerted effort to have the specified offals removed at the abattoirs and thereby excluded from the end products, and UKASTA members, presumably realising this and recognising the effects of the sustained barrage of adverse publicity about meat and bone meal's alleged association with BSE have fallen down on their agreement to take the full production, and in many cases, have not even taken their contracted tonnages on schedule. The result, as you will be aware is that there are substantial tonnages of meat and bone meal in stock seeking buyers. ¹⁸

3.91 The notice strongly recommended that:

[Members] seek full co-operation of all their abattoir suppliers to have the specified offals separated and stored separately for collection. The offals should also be stained by the meat inspectors according to the MAFF regulations.

The council recommends that if possible, to assist the abattoirs you collect these offals and process them separately. DO NOT USE THEM TO PRODUCE GREAVES OR MEAL FOR SALE TO COMPOUND FEED MANUFACTURERS. It is suggested that the protein residues produced from them should be used as fertiliser or dumped at licensed sites . . .

3. You should assess the costs to yourselves of this disposal and charge the abattoirs accordingly. ¹⁹

3.92 The notice concluded:

We would emphasise that we are not attempting to make these proposals compulsory in any way. They are to be regarded as VOLUNTARY RECOMMENDATIONS, but are recommendations which are in everyone's best interest to comply with in view of the difficult circumstances we find ourselves in at present. ²⁰

3.93 In March 1990 UKRA also issued a statement for the attention of slaughterhouse owners and operators:

Owing to the adverse trading conditions resulting from the MAFF Order banning the use of certain bovine offals in feedstuffs for human consumption which came into force on the 13 November 1989 [UKRA] has advised its members not to collect the specified offals from abattoirs i.e. brain, spinal [cord], thymus, spleen, tonsils and intestines; unless they have been separated from all other animal waste; are stained, as stated in the Order; and are stored separately for collection and disposal by our members. This is to come into affect from Monday 26 March 1990. ²¹

3.94 On 20 March 1990 Mr Foxcroft of PDM wrote to all its customers advising that:

A further measure which will now be taken by us is to offer meal which also excludes any raw materials originating from fallen stock, condemned animals or tissues.

You may not be aware that some productions of meat & bone meal contain significant levels of raw materials from these sources (in excess of 20%). As well as being likely to contain some of the 'prescribed offals' the use of fallen stock would at least be viewed by many as an unacceptable practice. We believe it prudent to take this action and remove a possible point of criticism before it can be turned into a 'media issue'.

Of course, in the absence of any 'test' for proscribed tissues or fallen stock such undertakings and assurances require a large degree of confidence in the individual renderer on the part of the feed producer. ²²

3.95 On 24 May 1990 PDM went as far as issuing a press release to reassure the agriculture sector that its MBM did not include SBO. ²³

3.96 Most renderers undertook the voluntary measures recommended by UKRA. ²⁴ Renderers told the Inquiry that they did their best to ensure that no SBO was included in material that was meant to be SBO-free, but without statutory backing they were reliant on the cooperation of the slaughterhouses. The willingness of slaughterhouse owners and managers to adhere strictly to the requirements varied. ²⁵

3.97 On 3 April 1990 at a meeting between UKRA and UKASTA representatives, UKRA reported that 75 per cent of its members were supporting the voluntary ban on the use of SBO. As a result, UKRA estimated that between 90 and 95 per cent of the MBM produced by its members was free of SBO. Those renderers who had not confirmed support were expected to do so shortly. ²⁶ Mr Bill Bacon, former Council member of UKRA, told the Inquiry that in 1986 the majority, but not all, of UK renderers were members of UKRA. ²⁷

3.98 On 9 April 1990 UKASTA issued Feed Circular No. 467. It recommended that its members visit their suppliers of MBM to assure themselves that their contractual specifications were being met. ²⁸ Representatives of Dalgety, Bibby and BOCM Pauls said in oral evidence that their companies commenced inspections of their suppliers' rendering plants to assure themselves of compliance with the voluntary animal SBO ban. ²⁹ Mr Reed of UKASTA told the Inquiry that whilst some other feed manufacturers would also have started auditing their suppliers:

. . . inevitably most of them would not have had the sort of resources that the national companies could bring to bear on this problem. On the other hand they often did not need to. A smaller compounder might only buy on a regular basis from one or two sources so the problem of going round a lot of different rendering premises would not arise. I am well aware that some other companies were making inspection visits but I am sure it was not universal. ³⁰

3.99 Mr David Goldwater of the Grain and Feed Trade Association (GAFTA) added that smaller feed manufacturers could use some other entity - such as a veterinary advisor service - to inspect suppliers on their behalf and report back. ³¹

3.100 UKASTA's concern over the enforcement of the voluntary ban is illustrated by further advice in Feed Circular No. 467, which suggested that members who wished to assure themselves further that SBO was being handled separately, should visit the slaughterhouses supplying the raw materials to the renderer. ³² However, the Inquiry received no evidence that this was ever done.

MAFF's continued opposition following the introduction of the voluntary ban

3.101 MAFF's opposition to UKASTA's voluntary ban did not cease after the ban came into effect, and those within the Department remained 'most unhappy' with the action taken by the industry. They maintained that the ban was unjustified, and Mr Lawrence suggested that Mr Curry could write to UKASTA to register his 'disappointment', particularly as Sir Richard Southwood had restated on 26 October 1989 that there was no evidence that the encephalopathies could be transferred to pigs or poultry. ³³

3.102 On 10 November 1989 Mr Meldrum wrote to the Chairman of UKRA, Mr Field, restating the Ministry's firm view. Quoting from the Southwood Report and referring to the recent advice from Sir Richard Southwood, Mr Meldrum concluded:

In all the circumstances, based on the best scientific evidence available, there is no justification whatsoever for considering a ban on the feeding of meat and bone meal derived from ruminant material to either pigs or poultry. ³⁴

3.103 Mr Meldrum wrote along similar lines to UKASTA's President, Mr Peter Webb, on 15 November 1989, expressing his disappointment that the Association had felt it necessary to advise its members to embark on the voluntary ban and emphasising the lack of a scientific justification for the action. He said that recent transmission studies undertaken at the National Institutes of Health in the United States also supported his position that it was 'perfectly safe to feed meat and bone meal to pigs'. ³⁵

3.104 Mr Meldrum explained his approach at this time to the Inquiry:

. . . I was happy to rest upon the scientific evidence until we had information later that pigs succumb to BSE when challenged experimentally in the laboratory. ³⁶

3.105 Mr Meldrum emphasised to the Inquiry that this scientific evidence was no longer confined to the Southwood Report as by this time the totality of MAFF's knowledge of TSEs and his personal knowledge had increased significantly. This included evidence that:

1. pigs had had greater exposure to the agent, without any ill effect, both from meat and bone meal in feed, and also through the feeding of waste food; ³⁷
2. there was no record of pigs having succumbed to a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy under natural or indeed artificial conditions; and
3. in a study (undertaken at the USA's National Institutes of Health), in which the agent which caused kuru in man was injected intracerebrally into pigs, the disease was not transmitted, whereas in similar studies it was successfully transmitted to a number of other species including sheep and goats. ³⁸

3.106 On 16 November 1989 Professor Anthony Epstein, ³⁹ a member of the Southwood Working Party, wrote to Sir Richard Southwood. A passage from the letter suggests that he did not share Sir Richard's views on the issue:

I was not very happy to hear that bone/meat meal containing presumably infected sheep/cow material is being fed to pigs in UK and also exported to countries where it may be fed to cows, but what can one do? The CVO from the Ministry was not very helpful on this point. ⁴⁰

3.107 A meeting was held on 17 November 1989, attended by Mr Meldrum, Mr Cruickshank, Mr Lowson, Mr Lawrence and representatives of UKASTA, UKRA, the Meat Industry Liaison Group (MILG) and the National Farmers' Union (NFU), to discuss the voluntary ban. A UKASTA note of the meeting records that UKASTA explained that their decision reflected the pressure from retailers and farmers on feed compounders. They said that they could not risk any criticism that they were using material excluded on safety grounds from human consumption. UKRA reported that they had visited the supermarket groups and there was no evidence of any concern about the inclusion of SBO in animal feedstuffs. MAFF also reported that their discussions with representatives of the large supermarket groups suggested the major multiples accepted the scientific advice. Similarly, the NFU said that its Livestock Committee chairman had reported that there was no consistent pressure from farmers for SBO to be excluded from animal feedstuffs. It was argued that UKASTA was over-reacting to the concerns of a small minority of farmers and retailers. UKRA also emphasised that the function of renderers was to make the by-products of the meat industry safe for use by feed compounders. However, in light of the development of BSE, UKASTA challenged whether this statement was true in practice. The note of the meeting recorded that the 'general consensus of opinion was that UKASTA was getting the whole issue out of perspective and should rescind the recommendation for the voluntary ban'. In turn,UKASTA undertook to advise the Feed Executive Committee 'of the strength of feeling being expressed by the other organisations represented at the meeting'. ⁴¹

3.108 The MILG's summary of the meeting notes that:

MILG reiterated the seriousness created by the UKASTA decision. There would be a very significant additional cost as a result and this could not be absorbed by the abattoir sector. There was an element of risk in all foods and the remote BSE risk had been magnified out of all proportion. UKASTA should accept that no 100% guarantees could be given. They should reconsider their decision in the light of the comments made. ⁴²

3.109 In a minute of the meeting prepared by Mr Lawrence and circulated within MAFF four days after the meeting, it was recorded:

Predictably UKASTA was criticised by the other sectors of the industry. In defending their actions they mentioned farmer/retailer concerns and the fact that they did not have a copper bottom guarantee that there was no risk of transmission to pigs and poultry. ⁴³