Pigs fed on feed that caused BSE

01 May 1998

Pigs fed on feed ‘that caused BSE’

By FWi staff

BRITISH consumers are eating pork from pigs fed on the feed thought to have caused “mad cow” disease. Farmers are avoiding a ban on dried meat and bone meal by feeding it to pigs in liquid form.

Meat and bone meal was banned 10 years ago after fears that it hastened the spread of BSE. But the ban only covered dried animal by-products, and a loophole means that meat and bone material in liquified form can still be fed legally.

Paul Foxcroft, managing director of renderers Prosper De Mulder told the BSE Inquiry: “You can still feed animal proteins to farm livestock today as long as you do not dry it … But if we just boil it… and put it in buckets, or a tanker, or whatever, you could feed it to pigs and indeed that is done today.”

Mr Foxcroft said that “hundreds of tonnes a week” of animal by-products were being fed in this way. “Its certainly become more common over the past 6-9 months,” he told FWi.