As of: 10/6/2021 8:12 a.m.
Pig and poultry farmers are allowed to feed animal protein again. Animal meal has been banned for livestock since the 2001 BSE crisis. But it is questionable whether it will actually end up in the feeding trough again.
Pigs and poultry may in future be fed with meat and bone meal again. The EU Commission recently decided on this. Since 2001, due to the BSE crisis, there has been an EU-wide feed ban on meat and bone meal for farm animals. So far, only fish meal has been excluded from this. Considerations to relax the ban on pigs and poultry have been going on for years. Because animal protein is a valuable source of protein.
But for a long time there was no suitable analytical method with which the presence of pig or poultry material in feed could be detected. However, this is the prerequisite that the so-called inter-species feed ban is still observed. It prohibits feeding poultry proteins to poultry as well as pig proteins to pigs. In the meantime, however, there are detection methods based on the polymerase chain reaction (PCR).
BSE cases caused a stir
In 1985 there were major BSE infections in Great Britain for the first time. In total, more than 180,000 cases of “mad cow disease” have been diagnosed there – these are the official figures. It is believed, however, that a total of more than three million cattle in the United Kingdom were infected with the BSE pathogen. The cattle epidemic was first detected in Germany on November 24, 2000.
Inadequately heated meat and bone meal, colloquially meat and bone meal, is the most likely cause of the transmission of the pathogen. Because cattle are pure herbivores, the feeding of animal meal to ruminants has been banned in Europe since 1994, but after that it appeared to have been fed illegally. In 2001 the ban was extended to all farm animals as a precaution.
No danger to non-ruminants
So now pigs and poultry should be allowed to feed on animal proteins again. The EU Commission justifies this with two scientific reports from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). The result: In non-ruminants, “no TSE cases were detected under natural conditions”. The group of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE) includes the cattle disease BSE as well as the animal disease “scrapie” in sheep. However, there is one restriction: a pig may not eat any components of another pig, poultry may not eat any other poultry. This is prohibited for ethical reasons.
Before 2001, meat and bone meal also contained, for example, the spinal cord or the brain of cattle. According to BSE, these components were classified as risk material – according to the degree of danger they pose in three risk categories. Today, raw material for animal meal – or more correctly for “processed animal protein” – is only allowed to come from animals that are suitable for slaughter and human consumption. These include poultry heads, hides and skins, horns and feet, feathers or blood.
Animal meal in pet food
With the animal meal ban in 2001, the feed companies had to realign themselves. The animal by-products that still occur – around 1.9 million tons per year in Germany – are now mainly used in pet food. A small proportion is processed into fertilizers or is exported. Since sales in the pet food industry are currently booming due to the high world market prices for animal protein, industry insiders expect that not much will be left for the agricultural sector.
Rainer Berndt, Managing Director of Berndt GmbH, operates plants for the processing of leftover food and animal by-products at several locations in Bavaria. He doubts that there will be a significant market for meat and bone meal in livestock feed in Central Europe. In addition, it is very time-consuming to produce pure animal protein. Especially in Bavaria, slaughterhouses are not of the size to sell the necessary goods in sufficient quantities. However, the law does not allow mixed processing of poultry and pork.
Feed manufacturers fear strict requirements
To what extent compound feed manufacturers will use animal proteins in poultry or pig feed in the future is still completely unclear. The managing director of the German Association for Animal Nutrition (DVT), Peter Radewahn, emphasizes that systems that produce feed for several animal species cannot use animal proteins at all. For safety reasons alone, there is “zero tolerance”.
This means: If only the smallest amounts of poultry material in poultry feed or pig material in pig feed were found during controls, the system should no longer be able to produce. According to Radewahn, completely carryover-free production is hardly feasible in a large-scale plant in which several thousand, sometimes tens of thousands of tons pass through each year.
Radewahn explains that one must first know in detail all the requirements that the authorities would impose on the works before decisions could be made. The European feed association Fefac estimates that only around ten percent of the feed mills across the EU could guarantee the required single-type separation.
Check the benefits of animal protein first
Are animal proteins even necessary in feed? Animal proteins are considered to be easily digestible, have a favorable amino acid pattern, have many vitamins and are also rich in phosphorus. Birds and wild boars also eat animal protein in the wild. An equivalent vegetable substitute is simply protein from soybeans. According to the assessment of Wolfgang Preißinger, feed expert at the Bavarian State Research Center for Agriculture, it is necessary to first check the feed value of the re-approved feed. This is the only way to determine whether the performance of the animals will change and to what extent this feed should be used in the future.
In terms of sustainability, many would like it if fewer soy imports from overseas were necessary through the use of animal proteins. Organic farmers in particular, for whom the concept of circularity plays a major role, would theoretically benefit from the new application possibilities. Because they are not allowed to use synthetically produced amino acids, the protein requirement is greatest in the feed trough on organic farms.
But the number of processing companies that work both “organic” and separately according to animal species is extremely small. The Association of Processing Companies of Animal By-Products also calculates that the amount of processed animal protein available in Germany could replace just 4.5 percent of soy imports in animal feed.
Insects as an alternative source of protein?
An alternative animal protein feed could be insects in the future. The EU Commission has also given the go-ahead for feeding pigs and poultry. There are no concerns as poultry are insectivores and pigs are omnivores. Feeding is permitted under the same conditions that apply to feeding fish in aquaculture. The first farmers have already expressed their interest in producing insect larvae on their farms instead of milk, meat or eggs in the future.