- BSE Update - SRM headed for landfills. Will the landfill
leachates continue go to POTWs where US EPA and Wisconsin DNR say the wastewater
treatment processes reconcentrate the prions in sewage sludge ?
-
- "These so-called "specified risk materials,"
or SRM, include the skull, brain, eyes, tonsils, spinal cord and the nerves
attached to the spinal cord and brain. They must be removed from slaughtered
cattle 30 months or older. The distal ileum, a less than one-metre chunk
of the small intestine, must be cut out of cattle of all ages."
- " . . . - the brains, spines and organs that can
harbour the infectious prions that cause mad cow disease - '
-
- ". . . waiting to find out if the Canadian Food
Inspection Agency (CFIA) would allow them to drop their high-risk tissues
in landfills . . . "
-
- " . . .to cover the escalating cost of getting the
high-risk tissue collected and into landfills . . . "
-
- "Under the new rules, SRM must be removed using
special equipment and precautions, hauled away in dedicated trucks, processed
and then buried in landfills, burned in high-temperatures incinerators,
or dumped into composters and bioenergy plants. " [Note: Numerous
experts and scientists have stated composting does NOT inactivate infectious
prions.]
-
- "One of the key problems has been the fact that
many landfills across the country have not submitted an application,"
said Libby. Disposal sites must be assessed to see if they meet the new
SRM containment rules; the CFIA has hired extra staff and is working with
the provinces and landfill operators to get the job done."
-
- "The rest of the SRM will be compressed, "dewatered"
and turned into meat and bone meal, which has the consistency of fine sand.
The meal will be hauled to Coronation, a small town in east-central
Alberta, which is about to become SRM capital of Canada, says John Rush,
district manager of Waste Services (CA) Inc., which runs the landfill where
it is to be buried. "
-
- "With 80 per cent of Canada's cattle in western
Canada, it is expected the bulk of the country's SRM will end up in the
Coronation landfill for the next few years until incineration facilities
come online to burn it."
-
- **************
-
- A Wisconsin Risk Assessment confirms that hydrophobic
prions are partitioned to the sewage sludge:
- "Based on the above, the primary pathway of potential
- risk identified for the CWD prion following landfill
-
- disposal of infected deer can be described as:
-
- carcass *landfill* leachate* wastewater
- treatment plant* sludge*
- farm field*ingestion by humans or deer"
- http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/wildlife/Whealth/issues/Cwd/risk_analysis.pdf
- PAGE 4: "Land application of municipal sludge that
potentially contains CWD PrP-res may result in the presence of CWD PrP-res
in surface soils."
- Once that leachate (from landfill) reaches the wastewater
treatment plant the suspended solids will be separated from the effluent.
Those suspended solids will then be termed "sludge" or biosolids.
-
- POTWs = Publicly Owned Sewage Treatment Works
-
-
- ********************
-
-
- Why EPA's policy of encouraging topdressing municipal
sewage sludge "biosolids" which may contain infectious human
and animal prions on dairy pastures, hay fields and grazing lands is so
dangerous . . . .
-
- http://www.sflorg.com/sciencenews/scn070607_03.html
- Soil Particles Found To Boost Prion's Capacity To Infect
-
- Friday, July 6, 2007
-
- The rogue proteins that cause chronic wasting disease
(CWD) exhibit a dramatic increase in their infectious nature when bound
to common soil particles, according to a new study.
-
- "We observed an almost 700-fold difference"
in the rate of infection."
-
- Grazing cattle ingest up to one kilogram a day (2.2 pounds)
of soil (and topdressed sludge) with their fodder . . . . .
-
-
- *********************
-
-
- http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=0f4e0fed-
- bd21-4762-babf-37cd5b597edb&k=42095&p=2
-
- Monday July 9, 2007
-
- Costly New Mad Cow Rulse A Fiasco, Slaughterhouses
Complain
-
- By Margaret Munro
- CanWest News Service
- 7-9-7
-
-
- CHILLIWACK BC -- Neil Roe, a butcher
with Johnston Packers for 7 years, prepares the beef for the cooler. Keeping
BSE out of the food supply is an important mandate in their safety measures.
June 14, 2007
-
- CHILLIWACK, BC -- Cattle carcasses hang from giant
hooks on the ceiling at B.C.'s largest slaughterhouse. Rivulets of blood
and bone dust trail off into drains on the cement kill-room floor.
-
- The animals' lungs sit in a bucket waiting for
a local farmer to fetch them for his hungry mink. Other animal parts -
the brains, spines and organs that can harbour the infectious prions that
cause mad cow disease -disappear down special chutes. They fall into bins
that will be taken by waste-hauling trucks along the Trans-Canada Highway
to Calgary and turned into everything from chicken feed to dog chow.
-
- But this elaborate and controversial recycling
system becomes illegal in Canada this week as part of the federal government's
sweeping "enhanced" feed ban.
-
- On Thursday, cattle tissues linked to the spread
of mad cow disease must be removed from carcasses and destroyed or permanently
contained. They are no longer allowed in pet or animal feed, and are banned
from fertilizers and bone meal widely used on farms and home gardens.
-
- The change sounds straightforward, but insiders
say it is anything but.
-
- "It's a bureaucratic nightmare," says
Dave Fernie, who runs a small slaughterhouse in the B.C. interior.
-
- Fernie and many others were still in limbo last
week, waiting to find out if the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA)
would allow them to drop their high-risk tissues in landfills or if they
have to ship it to a special processing plant in Alberta.
-
- And the $80 million the Harper government promised
to help ease the transition a year ago has yet to reach many people on
the front lines whose bills are soaring as they scramble to meet the new
rules.
-
- "It's enormously frustrating," says Dennis
Laycraft, executive vice-president of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association,
which is asking the federal government for another $50 million to offset
the "extraordinary" costs piling up because of government funding
delays and continuing confusion about the rules.
-
- "We're not asking for a handout to cattlemen,"
says Laycraft. The $50 million is needed, he says, to cover the escalating
cost of getting the high-risk tissue collected and into landfills while
the government resolves outstanding policy questions, and incinerators
and other plants are built to destroy the risky tissues.
-
- These so-called "specified risk materials,"
or SRM, include the skull, brain, eyes, tonsils, spinal cord and the nerves
attached to the spinal cord and brain. They must be removed from slaughtered
cattle 30 months or older. The distal ileum, a less than one-metre chunk
of the small intestine, must be cut out of cattle of all ages.
-
- Under the new rules, SRM must be removed using
special equipment and precautions, hauled away in dedicated trucks, processed
and then buried in landfills, burned in high-temperatures incinerators,
or dumped into composters and bioenergy plants. Permits from the Canadian
Food Inspection Agency are required every step of the way.
-
- The ban and its paper trail will stretch from the
farm gate to slaughterhouses, rendering plants and landfills - which require
not just special permits, but often costly renovations.
-
- The 70-year-old company Johnston Packers, for instance,
tucked on a mountainside near Chilliwack, B.C., needs a major overhaul:
special filters on drains in the kill room to catch any bits over four
millimetres in size, separate waste shoots, costly new saws and equipment
for removing SRM, and an air-conditioned room dedicated to SRM storage.
-
- Bonnie Windsor, assistant manager of the slaughterhouse,
says the $1-million renovation project was derailed by delays in government
funding; she and her colleagues have cobbled together an interim solution
that entails erecting steel partitions in the kill room and segregating
SRM so the plant can continue to operate when the new rules take effect.
But there was no government financing available to help offset that cost
- which she estimates at close to $200,000 - as the rules say funding for
SRM renovations must be approved before the work is undertaken.
-
- "We've been left to burn," says Windsor.
-
- At his meat plant in Big Lake, Fernie's voice shakes
in frustration as he describes his dealings with CFIA over the ban. "It's
been a fiasco," he says.
-
- Fernie asked the CFIA more that a year ago whether
he would be able to dump SRM into a dedicated pit at the nearby Big Lake
landfill east of Williams Lake with the other waste from his slaughter
operation. He was still waiting for an answer last week.
-
- The federal government announced the feed ban a
year ago, along with the promise of $80 million to help implement the new
rules.
-
- But the money didn't materialize until this spring,
when federal Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl started divvying up the
funding among the provinces after they agreed to kick in extra funding.
The last of the federal-provincial deals to establish "a safe and
effective disposal system" - a $3.8 million agreement with Prince
Edward Island - was announced on June 29.
-
- Federal officials concede there have been delays
but say the responsibility does not lie solely with Ottawa.
-
- The provincial governments are responsible for
distributing the SRM implementation money under the various federal-provincial
agreements, says Freeman Libby, national director of the CFIA's Feed Ban
Task Force.
-
- As for the SRM permits - and lack of them - Libby
says the permitting process "is quickly picking up." He could
not say how many permits have been issued, but says hundreds must be in
place by Thursday to transport, store and dispose of the more than 100,000
tonnes of SRM generated in Canada each year.
-
- "One of the key problems has been the fact
that many landfills across the country have not submitted an application,"
said Libby. Disposal sites must be assessed to see if they meet the new
SRM containment rules; the CFIA has hired extra staff and is working with
the provinces and landfill operators to get the job done.
-
- SIDEBAR
-
-
- CanWest News Service
-
- While small and remote slaughterhouses have acute
problems with Canada's new mad-cow rules, most of the country is served
by special, and pricey, disposal services for the high-risk tissues that
will no longer be used in animal feed and fertilizer.
-
- The rendering company West Coast Reduction has
begun a pick-up service in Alberta, Saskatchewan and southern B.C. for
specified risk materials (SRM) that must now be diverted out of slaughterhouses
for disposal. The company's trucks will haul the segregated tissues to
its plants in Saskatoon and Calgary for rendering. It will be reduced to
tallow, which will be purified and sold for use in everything from cosmetics
to industrial lubricants, says Barry Glotman, president of West Coast Reduction.
The rest of the SRM will be compressed, "dewatered" and turned
into meat and bone meal, which has the consistency of fine sand.
-
- The meal will be hauled to Coronation, a small
town in east-central Alberta, which is about to become SRM capital of Canada,
says John Rush, district manager of Waste Services (CA) Inc., which runs
the landfill where it is to be buried.
-
- Rush says the plan is to mix the SRM meat and bone
meal with contaminated soil from the oil industry, using a dedicated $600,000
bulldozer. The mixture will be buried in a seven-metre-deep clay-lined
"cell" about the size of three football fields. Any liquid that
runs out of the landfill will then be collected and pumped 1,500 metres
underground. With 80 per cent of Canada's cattle in western Canada, it
is expected the bulk of the country's SRM will end up in the Coronation
landfill for the next few years until incineration facilities come online
to burn it.
-
- Jim Long, vice-president of Rothsay, a rendering
company that handles animal waste from Newfoundland to Winnipeg, says most
of the SRM in eastern Canada is to be collected by dedicated trucks and
rendered into dry meal before heading to the landfills.
-
- Meat and bone meal from beef slaughter waste containing
SRM material used to be worth about $200 a tonne and was used in animal
feed and fertilizers. Now it will cost about $75 a tonne to get rid of
the stuff, says Dennis Laycraft of the Canadian Cattleman's Association.
-
- The costs will eventually trickle back down to
farmers and consumers, says Glotman.
-
- © CanWest News Service 2007
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