Allister identifies positives and negatives in Animal By-Product Regulation Reform
16 September 2008
"The review which is now underway of the Animal By-Products Regulation, first introduced in 2003, throws up opportunities to secure improvements on a variety of issues. In particular, on the Agricultural Committee we will be pressing for relaxation in the fallen animals scheme and seeking legal certainty on the definition of tallow so as to remove it from the restrictions of the Waste Incineration Directive (WID).
At present on farm burial of animals is only permissible in the UK in very remote areas, so that only the Scottish Highlands and Islands have qualified. There are signs of a willingness to relax the criteria, which could see a return to permission for burial of smaller animals on farm in Northern Ireland. I will be working with the Committee's rapporteur, Scottish MEP Alyn Smith, to try and secure these changes.
It is also critical that with absolute legal certainty tallow is removed from the ambit of WID and accepted unequivocally as a fuel. The proposal from the Commission, as it presently stands, moves in the right direction, but lacks the legal certainty which I wish to see.
In terms of less hopeful developments in the current review of the ABP Regulation, I am unhappy with the proposal to end the exemption from WID rules for small scale low capacity incinerators burning animal by-products. There are approximately 2000 of these in the UK, ranging from pet incinerators to on-farm projects, and it seems totally unnecessary to subject them to the tyranny of WID. Nor do I see the justification for bringing conversion of discarded cooking oil into biodiesel within the ambit of the ABP Regulation."
ENDS
