EU puts off PAP for pigs till another day
The European Commission has stalled plans to re-introduce processed animal protein (PAP) in animal feed. Failure to prove cannibalism rule underlies this decision.
The Commission had been proposing to permit pig protein to be fed to poultry and vice versa if reliable tests could differentiate the two types of protein.
But such tests are not available yet and therefore it cannot be guaranteed that an individual is fed remains from its own species.
As a result, the Commission is now proposing that the lifting of the ban will only apply to fish feed.
The feeding of PAP, or meat and bone meal, to animals was banned across Europe, in the wake of the BSE crisis, which was blamed cattle ingesting infected material of other cattle in their feed.
The calls to lift the ban for pig and poultry were driven by a combination of the virtual elimination of BSE in the EU and the rising cost of animal protein.
Risk assessments by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) concluded that the proposed changes would give rise to a ‘negligible risk’ of exposing farmed animals to BSE – an outcome conditional on maintaining effective controls to prevent infective material from entering.
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