Canadian legislators should think carefully before applying foreign feed regulations to a Canadian feed industry that is already one of the safest and most carefully regulated in the world.
Humphry Koch, past president of the National Renderers Association and a top executive of one of Canada’s largest rendering companies, said Canadian regulators and legislators should not be swayed by the marketplace, which has lost its appetite for feed ingredients made from blood and bone meal.
Koch, executive vice-president of West Coast Reduction Ltd., said regulations protecting human health are paramount but “an outright ban on the use of rendered products would … be irresponsible in a world desperately short of protein and animal fats.
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“Feeding a world with a burgeoning population is becoming an increasingly difficult challenge for agriculture,” Koch told delegates at the NRA annual convention recently.
“Mass production can sometimes have disastrous consequences and there are many food borne diseases that have done more harm than BSE will ever do,” Koch said.
“It is ludicrous to apply rules designed to deal with the UK and EU BSE crisis to Canada, and any other minimal risk country that has proven safeguards in place.”
The rendering industry has been under increasing pressure since Canada announced on May 20 that an Alberta slaughter cow had been diagnosed with BSE.
Since then, rendering companies have been seeking alternative buyers for their products, which have been shut out of the U.S. market for more than six months.
For some beef slaughter operations, disposal in municipal landfills – a practice that’s been outlawed in Europe – is the only option.
Cargill’s beef packing plant in High River, Alta., which renders its own byproducts, has had to find new ways of disposing of some of its waste, said company spokesperson Robert Meijer. He said Cargill is waiting for markets of bovine rendered feed products to reopen.
“Those costs are factored in somewhere,” Meijer said.
“Somebody has to pay for that loss (of income) to the chain. A total feed ban on rendered material would be pretty hard to deal with. Somebody would have to consider the consequences of all that landfill and who would pay.”
Glen Gratton of Rothsay renderers said costs to his business are up because of environmental and regulatory requirements at all levels of government.
Market prices, meanwhile, have dropped sharply.
“If a feed ban were to be in place for all livestock, I am not sure exactly how we would dispose of what we have or who would end up paying for it….
“We need some new uses for our products,” he said.
