Volume 9: Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
Part 1: Wales
2. Setting the scene
The animal feed industry

2.4 Meat and bone meal (MBM) was sold to animal feed compounders as a source of protein. In Wales as in England, there were three large national feed companies which owned mills throughout the United Kingdom and held between 50 and 55 per cent of the market share in the late 1980s. The rest of the UK market was made up of smaller independent or 'country' compounders and farmer cooperatives, the latter supplying approximately 10 per cent of the market. ¹

2.5 Most of the feed compounders sourced MBM for their products from within the United Kingdom, but Mr Jim Reed, Director-General of the feed trade association UKASTA, told the Inquiry:

There has always been fairly free flow of meat and bone meal and other products between the Republic of Ireland and the UK. ²

2.6 The finished product tended to be sold fairly near the mill. A representative of one of the largest feed manufacturers said of the output of its Carmarthen mill:

Predominantly, these products would have been sold within a reasonable distance of the mill, such that the lorry can actually get there and back easily within a day, usually within a 30-mile zone, but possibly up to 100 miles, maybe. It would not travel all across the country. ³