Over 23,000 pounds of raw material was illegally dumped in Peoria, IL, in September, causing a massive stench and landing a greedy hauler in jail.
According to newspaper reports, 25-year-old Robert Markham was hired by a hide processor to transport and properly dispose of the company’s fleshing, the remaining muscle and fat by-products stripped from animal hides before the skins are used for leather. State law permits disposal of such by-products in county landfills with a special waste permit. Instead, Markham allegedly dumped plastic bags containing the material at four different locations in rural areas of Peoria, including under a railroad trestle on a creek floodplain that ultimately flows into the Illinois River and several rural roads that access corn fields. Local residents discovered the material after reporting a foul odor coming from the side of the road.
The hide processor, Noroper Export, Inc., had been contracting with National By-Products, a rendering facility in Mason City, IL, to dispose of the fleshing. But in early September, Noroper Manager Jose Torres reportedly met Markham at a club and, over a few drinks, offered him a job transporting the company’s daily material, which averaged about 20 garbage bags, to the Peoria City/County Landfill. Torres stated Markham was being paid $30 per trip for the service and conceded that he didn’t closely monitor the hauler during the two weeks he worked for Noroper. The Illinois Dead Animal Disposal Act stipulates that only licensed vehicles may transport raw material, a license Markham did not have. Torres claimed he was unaware of the law when he hired Markham. The law has been in effect since 1983.
According to Scott Mulford in the Illinois Attorney General’s press office, Markham was indicted in October on three counts of criminal disposal of waste in Peoria County. His trial is set for January 21, 2003. A civil complaint was subsequently filed against Noroper Export and three individuals: Jose Torres Sanchez, Ricardo Rodriguez, and Jose Rodelfo Rodriguez. Each are charged with two counts: transportation of rendering material without a license and failure to retain records. A court appearance in the civil matter is scheduled for January 14, 2003.
National By-Products aided the Illinois Department of Agriculture and Noroper in cleaning up the illegal disposal sites. In the end, Noroper paid substantially higher costs to properly dispose of the dumped materials compared to what it would have cost to have it collected by a renderer. The company may ultimately have to pay fines as well. National By-Products hauled the material to a local landfill.
“This incident was the result of a business hiring someone to make the raw animal by-products they generated disappear rather than paying the local rendering service to properly dispose of the products,” said David Kirstein, National By-Products. “This is just one example of a growing trend for illegal disposal of animal mortalities or by-products.”
Why the Trend?
Historically, renderers charged very little or nothing at all to pick up raw material and dead stock mortali-ties thanks to the high value of their finished products. However, in recent years, lost markets due to feeding ban regulations and depressed commodity prices have forced renderers to charge for collection. Consequently, the generators of animal by-products and mortalities have been turning to other disposal options that are often unregulated or under regulated.
Statistics support the fact that renderers are processing fewer mortalities each year. Of the 1.9 million pounds of ruminant mortalities documented in a Sparks Companies March 2002 report, only 45 percent were rendered in 2000, down 10 percent in five years. In an October 2002 survey of six renderers who process farm dead stock, all have seen a 10 to 20 percent decline in volume since 2000, with one renderer documenting a 50 percent drop. The survey suggests that U.S. renderers are now rendering less than 40 percent of the cattle mortalities.
Renderers across the United States have been explaining the illegal disposition of raw material situation to state and federal regulatory agencies in hopes of ensuring the situation can be curtailed. At a recent U.S. Animal Health Association (USAHA) meeting, National Renderers Association members offered a resolution to the USAHA’s Food Safety and Feed Safety Committees as an attempt to influence federal and state regulators to both establish a registry for disposal operators and establish a set of standards for disposal that would assure adequate traceability, biosecurity, and environmental protections. While the resolutions were passed in the committees, they were not approved by the USAHA Board of Directors.
Currently, the only control regulators have upon the disposition of ruminant by-products and mortal-ities is when these materials are rendered and restricted from being reintroduced into ruminant diets. Alternative disposal methods that are perceived as cheaper are often unregulated or have limited regula-tory oversight and do not provide the same level of biosecurity, traceability, and environmental protection that rendering currently provides.
Newsline - December 2002 Render