EU threat to poultry carcass incinerators

By Poultry World staff

THE European Parliament recently approved the second reading of the Waste Incineration Directive 7/2000 which if adopted will make the 2000-plus small incinerators on farms in the UK illegal after 2006.

According to Ben White of incinerator manufacturers William White, the key to the problem is in meeting Article 10.

This covers the control and monitoring of emissions – but this is geared to large continuous plants, not batch machines for animal waste.

The Directive – which falls under the remit of the Department of Environment Transport and the Regions – has been examined by their consultants.

They put a cost of compliance beyond the reach of those currently operating small on-farm incinerators.

Officials at the DETR believed there were only about 60 small units operating in the UK, a figure arrived out without any consultation with their colleagues in MAFF or incinerator manufacturers.

The NFU, Countryside Alliance, and incinerator manufacturers are lobbying ministers to ensure the UK obtains a review of the Directive by the Council of Ministers.

The situation in the UK is unique in so much that many more incinerators have been installed by small abattoirs, farmers, renderers and hunt kennels to comply with BSE regulations and other legislative requirements, said Richard Burge, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance.

Ben White says that the Government has the opportunity to rectify its error by negotiating the continuation of the exemption for small batch incinerators with a design capacity of less than 50kg/hr.