A Manitoba rendering company no longer picks up dead ruminants and a company in Saskatoon may follow suit as a consequence of BSE.
Rothsay, Manitoba’s only rendering company, has stopped picking up dead ruminant stock, citing low demand for the service.
Glen Gratton, the company’s western region manager, said it was impossible to justify the cost of travelling around the province to pick up dead animals with only a scant number of carcasses, even with the $50 pick-up fee the company began charging last year.
“You can’t charge enough to even make it a break-even prospect,” Gratton said.
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The company still picks up dead hogs and horses.
Calls for pickup of dead cattle dropped from 70 a day down to only a few per week, he said, as producers affected by the BSE crisis try to cut costs.
The Manitoba government earlier this spring pledged $400,000 for a program to help livestock producers deal with the removal of dead stock on their farms. The program covered the cost for producers wanting their dead cattle removed by Rothsay, but there was no extension of the program once the $400,000 was used up.
Gratton said Rothsay is watching to see what the final regulations will be for slaughter byproducts from ruminant animals in Canada. One possibility is that the new regulations could require the elimination of specified risk materials, such as the brain and spinal cord, from any type of animal feed. It is already banned from human food.
If there is an animal feed ban, rendering companies say little could be salvaged from dead cattle and would mean even less incentive to pick up dead ruminants.
The Saskatoon Processing Company, a division of West Coast Reduction, continues to pick up dead cattle within a 125 kilometre radius of Saskatoon and within an equal radius of Moose Jaw. The company charges four cents a pound and a minimum of $25. It renders the dead cattle into meat and bone meal products that can be marketed within Canada.
Bruce King of Saskatoon Processing said only the hides and tallow would have some value if SRMs were regulated out of the feed chain. “It would have a huge effect on our industry.”
For now, Saskatoon Processing has no plans to stop picking up dead ruminants. However, King said he has found that producers in Saskatchewan are also reluctant to pay a fee for the removal of those animals.
“It’s pretty quiet. We’re not getting many calls.”
Gratton said Rothsay might build a small plant in Manitoba specifically for rendering cattle if the new regulations for slaughter byproducts make some accommodation for SRMs.
“There’s not really a lot of payback. Even under normal circumstances, it’s pretty slim. But when you’re in the business, you try to serve it all.”
Now, dead cattle cannot be mingled with non-ruminant livestock species while being hauled by renderers.
Gratton said his firm may consider getting truck boxes that could segregate the cattle, depending on the outcome of the regulations.
Since the BSE discovery, Rothsay had been hauling the dead cattle to designated landfills. The company wants to see if there is a way to send those animals to Saskatoon Processing, while overcoming transportation costs.
