Carcasses of dogs destroyed by local authorities can end up in the food chain in the meat and bone-meal fed to pigs and poultry, the Department of Agriculture has confirmed.
A spokesman for the Department insisted that only a small proportion of the 30,000 dogs killed annually by local authorities ends up in poultry and pig feed.
He acknowledged that after an Irish Times report on the practice last week, officials moved to remind local authorities that they should send their dead dogs to a rendering plant in Co Cavan where animal feed is made. Most of the produce is sent abroad, but some remains in Ireland.
The Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals says dog carcasses were no longer being sent to town dumps because of fears of environmental pollution. They were increasingly being sent to local rendering plants.
The plant on which the Department of Agriculture is insisting is Monery By-Products, at Crossdoney, Ballinagh. The Department spokesman said meat by-products from animals are heated there at a sustained temperature of 133 degrees for 20 minutes and have to undergo "three-bar pressure" as part of the process of producing animal meal.
Most of the resultant bone-meal was exported to the Continent, he said, and used as pig and poultry feed. "Very little of it is used in Ireland."
All dead dogs will from now on go to Monery, he said.
"The local authorities have been doing their own thing over the years, but this will now stop."
The spokesman emphasised that dog carcasses comprise only a tiny proportion of the animal meat component of normal bone-meal - probably about 0.01 per cent at most, he claimed.
It was significant, he said, that such feed was given only to poultry and pigs and had been precluded from products fed to ruminants such as cattle and sheep under protective legislation introduced at the start of the decade to deal with the BSE scare.
The Government has moved promptly to stop the practice of dead dogs being recycled as animal feed in Ireland, he claimed.
The Irish Times reported last Thursday that "a major proportion" of the 27,848 dogs put down by local authorities in 1997 was sent to rendering plants and that some were used in animal feeds. This figure, according to the ISPCA, was equivalent to only about 50 per cent of the total, as it did not take into account the number of dogs put down by vets.
The latest figures for dog carcasses dealt with by local authorities were released by the Department of the Environment after a protest group drew attention to the use of "captive bullet" guns to put down unwanted dogs.
The ISPCA is critical of the use of these guns.
The Department of Environment revealed that Dublin city had the highest number of dogs put down in 1997 - the latest year for which figures were are available. Of 1,188 dogs seized by wardens and 1,408 "surrendered" to the corporation, 1,884 were destroyed.