THE EU Commission may soon allow Ireland to export meat and bonemeal, saving taxpayer millions in purchase and storage costs, it emerged yesterday.
Since February 21st the Department of Agriculture has banned the export of meat and bonemeal and has spent nearly £2 million buying up stocks of existing material amounting to more than 12,000 tonnes.
But the latest indications from Brussels, which will introduce stringent processing regulations from April 1st, are that Irish regulations introduced on February 21st will meet EU standards.
Under the Irish regulations, all specified risk material from Irish plants may only be processed at one location, Monery By Products, Cavan, a plant controlled by the IAWS company.
Specified risk materials (SRMs) are the organs from cattle and sheep, the skull, brain, eyes and spinal cord, which would be infected by spongiform diseases.
These SRMs are processed into meat and bonemeal and stored awaiting the building of an incinerator which will ultimately destroy this material, which cannot be fed to any animal.
The Department of Agriculture regulations now also specify that feed for the whitemeat trade (pigs and poultry), may only be assembled at plants dedicated for this purpose.
This regulation is designed to prevent bonemeal entering the cattle food chain because the Department believes contamination of cattle feed with meat and bonemeal has occurred in the past at mills servicing both sectors.
There is a belief in scientific circles that this contamination has led to the upsurge in BSE cases since July last and the number of such cases would fall if these regulations are properly policed.
The British authorities blamed similar contamination at feed mills for its failure to reduce the level of the disease in cattle. They had predicted an end to BSE in their national herd by the year 2000.
It is still not clear, however, if Ireland's rendering industry will be able to meet the new April 1st EU regulations which demand that offal from meat plants be treated at a temperature of 133C at high pressures Tore specified periods.
Currently, no Irish rendering plant has the machinery to meet the criteria laid down, but Forbairt is now processing applications from eight plants for grant-aid to introduce the technology.
Meanwhile, there is confusion over the operations of the knackeries which say farmers are unwilling to pay additional costs required to bring the SRMs for processing at the Cavan plant.