Editor’s Note – The following is a speech, in part, given by Humphry Koch, West Coast Reduction, Ltd., Canada, at the National Renderers Association 70th Annual Convention in October.
Seventy is a milestone with biblical connotations. Seventy is also a significant milestone in the life of the National Renderers Association (NRA).
Seventy years ago the world was emerging from the Great Depression; Hitler became Chancellor of Germany; Stalin ruled the Soviet Union; Winston Churchill, a lone voice, warned the British people against the folly of disarmament; Bing Crosby was America’s new singing sensation; 13 million people were unemployed in America; and Franklin D. Roosevelt started his first term as president.
The world’s population was slightly more than two billion people in 1933. Today, it is more than six billion people. America’s population in 1933 was about 130 million people. Today, it is about 300 million.
Seventy years ago in the rendering industry batch cooking was the norm; rendering was a family dominated small business enterprise; rendering was the silent industry; and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was not an issue.
Today, BSE is an issue; our volumes have expanded with the population; our industry has consolidated; continuous processing is the norm; and our standards and safeguards are rigorous.
The rendering industry has made great progress, and despite concerns about BSE, we would do well to heed the words of President Roosevelt in his inaugural address: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
The One Cow in Canada
The year 2003 has been dominated by the discovery of a single case of BSE in Alberta, Canada. The devastating impact this discovery has had on Canada’s cattle industry is well documented. More relevant, I believe, has been Canada’s response to this single incident.
On Sunday, May 18, I received an urgent call to participate in a government-sponsored conference call that was classified as highly confidential. At about the same time, the manager of West Coast Reduction’s Edmonton plant reported to the president of the company that Canadian Food Inspection Agency officials were scouring company records and asking questions about meat meal sales as far back as January.
What followed next is now history. The conference call revealed the likelihood of Canada’s first domestic case of BSE. This was subsequently confirmed after the brain of the diseased animal tested positive in both Winnipeg and in Weybridge, England.
Following the announcement of BSE, government and industry went into crisis mode and the United States, followed by most countries around the world, closed its borders to all Canadian beef products as well as non-ruminant rendered products such as poultry meal, fish meal, and porcine meal. The United States quickly announced a permitting system administered by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services (APHIS) and Canada commenced steps to secure the reopening of its border. These steps included the convening of a series of beef round table meetings in Ottawa, to which Canadian renderers were invited, and the establishment of a high level international commission tasked with examining and reporting back on Canada’s response to the incident.
Canadian renderers hit the ground running and within days assembled a comprehensive set of facts and figures about the industry which was used to support a proposal that was presented to the Minister of Agriculture and a comprehensive group of affected industry representa-tives at the first beef round table meeting. The renderers’ proposal dealt with solutions believed to limit disruption to the entire cattle industry and included a request that the government purchase all surplus meat and bone meal so as to limit disrup-tion to existing payment patterns within the entire cattle industry.
The renderers’ proposal was a success to the extent that it raised awareness about the very important role renderers play in the entire meat industry. However, no financial assistance was forthcoming and Canadian renderers very quickly realized we were on our own.
A consequence of the Canadian renderers’ rapid response to the crisis and the level of preparedness at a very early stage in the crisis was that we were very quickly able to set about restructuring our businesses and redesigning our business models. For example, payments for raw materials ceased, charging systems were implemented where none previously existed, raw materials were segregated between prohibited and non-prohibited, and the production of species-specific rendered products was accelerated.
Since May 20, most Canadian renderers have introduced separation of raw materials to maximize the marketability of rendered products. This has meant the elimination of flushing, the dedication of lines, and the trucking of ruminant and mixed ruminant products to plants processing only ruminant material.
Under the APHIS permitting system referred to earlier, non-ruminant products produced by Canadian renderers are again being allowed access to the U.S. market, as well as to some foreign markets. Because of the loss of foreign markets, some renderers are taking meat and bone meal to the landfill and prices for domestic sales are rock bottom. Despite this development, amendments to Canada’s existing mammalian-to-ruminant feed ban regulation are being approached very cautiously. Science is being allowed to prevail and ruminant meat and bone meal continues to be fed to pigs and poultry. Furthermore, it seems that low prices have resulted in an increase in domestic market consumption.
It is also interesting to note that the Canadian public has given an overwhelming vote of confidence to the Canadian beef industry by con-suming record quantities of beef since May 20. I take this market reaction to be a public vote of confidence in the safety of Canadian beef.
In my view, this vote of confidence extends to the Canadian rendering industry and reflects well on all NRA members as together we have worked diligently to develop and comply with regulated safeguards that enhance the quality and safety of all rendered products.
Looking ahead, there is still much work to be done. Canada’s number one priority was, and remains, resumption of trade in cattle, beef, and rendered products with the United States. This priority has been vigorously pursued since May 20 and to date it has borne some fruit. Under the APHIS permitting system, the United States is now importing boneless beef cuts derived from cattle under 30 months of age. This partial reopening of the U.S. border to Canadian beef is significant to the extent that no country reporting a case of BSE, has, to my knowledge, previously regained access to the U.S. market, or any other BSE-free market, for even some of its bovine products within the space of 14 weeks. The fact that the United States has actively worked towards reopening the beef trade with Canada demonstrates the high level of confidence the United States has in Canada’s BSE firewall.
The response by Canada to the BSE incident, the manner in which the safeguards worked, the subsequent international report on Canada’s response, and the fact that safeguards ensured that no BSE-infected material entered either the human food chain or the ruminant feed chain lend great credibility to existing safeguards in both Canada and the United States.
The Harvard Center for Risk Analysis study is currently being updated and its findings are reinforced by the manner in which the Canadian incident has manifested itself. In fact, to this day, there is no certainty that the Canadian incident was not a case of naturally occurring BSE. It is because of these factors that I believe we will see the reopening of the Canada-U.S. border to trade in most bovine products, including live cattle, sooner rather than later.
That having been said, there is still a long way to go, and without continued efforts from both sides of the border to maintain momentum, the process could stall.
On August 8, the U.S. Department of Agriculture publicly announced that it would deal with live animal imports and the remaining product bans through a formal rule making process that was to begin immediately. Rather than using the current interim permitting rule as the starting point, the United States has decided to construct a new rule. The concern Canadian cattlemen and renderers have is that the rule making process could take as long as six months.
While appreciating the United States’ desire to safeguard its own industry against the risks of BSE and at the risk of sounding partisan, I urge everyone in the industry to support an interim approach that will allow the immediate admission into the United States of live cattle under 30 months from Canada under the established import permit system that is being used to allow the importation of boneless beef from cattle under 30 months. Once the new rule replaces the import permit system, I am hope-ful that it will extend to cattle over, as well as under, 30 months of age.
The United States, Canada, and Mexico are an integrated market and I welcome the joint approach being taken by U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, Canada’s Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Lyle Vanclief, and Mexico’s Secretary of Agriculture to secure a revision to the Office International des Epizooties (OIE), now referred to as the World Organization for Animal Health, rules applying to BSE. It is ludicrous to apply rules designed to deal with the United Kingdom and European Union BSE crisis to Canada and any other minimal risk country that has proven safeguards in place.
Human health remains paramount. However, feeding a world with a burgeoning population is becoming an increasingly difficult challenge for agriculture. Mass production can sometimes have disastrous consequences and there are many food borne diseases that have done more harm than BSE will ever do.
We need to concentrate on BSE safeguards. Each case of BSE, wherever it occurs, underlines the need to examine existing safeguards and, if necessary, introduce additional safeguards. Existing safeguards, including the mammalian-to-ruminant feed ban, selected import controls, and surveillance of the high-risk cattle population, have been proven to work by the Canadian single incident. Strengthening these safeguards is a valid consideration and will no doubt be dealt with by the United States as it develops its new rule. However, an outright ban on the use of rendered products in non-ruminant animal feed would, in my opinion, be irresponsible in a world desperately short of protein and animal fats.
It is in the long-term interests of U.S. renderers and the U.S. cattle industry to see the resumption of Canada-U.S. trade. More important, it is in the best interest of developing countries to be able to continue using North American rendered products to fuel the growth of their poultry, pig, fish, and oleochemical industries. We need a new set of standards, preferably endorsed by the OIE, that are based on science, that recognize the inevitability of occasional cases of BSE, and that safeguard human and animal health without unnecessarily jeopardizing trade in meat and rendered products.
I expect a new set of standards to become a reality and 70 years from now, I am sure our industry will still be going strong, unless humanity is reconditioned to give up the pleasure, and necessity, of eating meat in favor of artificial substitutes.
From the Association - December 2003 Render