United Kingdom Agricultural Supply and Trade Association (UKASTA)

7.13 UKASTA is the principal UK trade association representing the interests of agricultural merchants and manufacturers of animal feedstuffs. In March 1988, the number of full members of UKASTA was 318. Of these, about 100 actually manufactured feed; many others were distributors of feed materials and/or finished feedstuffs.

7.14 UKASTA's income is derived mostly from membership subscriptions. In acting as the representative body for its members, its principal activities are the collection and dissemination of relevant information, and liaison with UK and EU government agencies and others. ¹³

Grain and Feed Trade Association (GAFTA)

7.15 GAFTA is an international trading organisation representing traders of many agricultural commodities, including raw materials used in animal feedstuffs. GAFTA's role is to promote trade in the commercial interest of its members. It also kept its members advised of developments in legislative Regulations and Orders that were made in relation to BSE. One of GAFTA's services is the provision of a range of standard forms of contract which sellers and buyers may use in their trade negotiations. These contracts have common trading clauses, leaving quality provisions for individual parties to agree. ¹⁴

Formulation of animal feed

7.16 Compound feed manufacturers produce both finished compound feeds (suitable for consumption by an animal without further processing), and protein concentrates, which are mixed and diluted with cereals on the farm before they are eaten by animals. ¹⁵

7.17 They produce compound feeds to meet specific nutritional requirements. However, market forces generally drive decisions on the raw materials to be used:

The compound feed producers will know the requirements that feed should meet in terms of energy, protein, fibre, vitamins and so on. The compounders will also have a list of different ingredients available to provide the requisite make-up of the feed. They will marry up the list of ingredients available with the feed requirements to provide the least cost formulation, that is, effectively, the cheapest combination of ingredients available on the market place for producing a feed compound capable of meeting the requirements. ¹⁶

The process of diet formulation is complex and necessitates the use of computers to run linear programming calculations. This programme matches the set constraints (specification) of the diets with all the data on all the raw materials available to produce formulations for each product sold. The linear programme would operate to optimum cost, whilst ensuring that the specification of all diets was met. ¹⁷

7.18 In 1986, a typical dairy cow compound would have been made up as follows:

Cereals and/or substitutes 40% (wheat, barley, manioc).

Cereal by-products 35% (from flour milling, starch extraction, brewing and distilling industries).

Oilseed meals 10% (usually after fat extraction, mainly rapeseed but could be others such as soya, sunflower, etc).

High-protein supplement 3 to 5% (MBM or fishmeal).

Oils or fats 3 to 4% (vegetable and animal).

Molasses 3 to 4%.

Minerals and vitamins 2 to 3%. ¹⁸

7.19 Sometimes more unusual ingredients were used. A series of articles appearing in 1991 described ingredients ranging from dried citrus fruit pulp to dried coffee residues, and including nutritionally improved straw and feather meal. ¹⁹

7.20 New ingredients in a compound feed were tested, both in the laboratory and on animals, to check for palatability and toxicity. ²⁰ However, MBM was considered a safe material that did not need testing. Its quality was regarded as the responsibility of the renderers. ²¹ The issue of whether MBM used in animal feed was homogeneous in terms of its ingredients, or instead might have contained concentrated lumps of one ingredient, is discussed in Chapter 6, on rendering. That chapter also notes that renderers were divided between those that rendered red meat by-products of all kinds (producing MBM), and those that rendered poultry by-products (producing poultry meal). MBM could be derived from the by-products of cattle, sheep or pigs (or all of them together), and animal feed manufacturers were not told which were used. Poultry meal was sometimes used in feed production, but MBM was cheaper and thus usually preferred. ²²

7.21 In addition, tallow from the rendering process was used in feeds for all animals. ²³ It was suggested that tallow was also used as a fat supplement in milk fed to calves. ²⁴

7.22 It was common for products containing gelatine to be incorporated in animal feed (for information on the production of gelatine from bovine material, see Chapter 8). Representatives of the animal feed industry said in oral evidence:

The animal feed industry has long used by-products from the human food industry; and it is entirely possible that some of those by-products from the human food industry would contain gelatine. ²⁵

There could be 2.5 per cent gelatine in some of the human food by-products. So, whilst the source from vitamins would be extremely low, if you were using that particular by-product, there could be that quantity or a quantity of gelatine which may or may not have been detected; we do not know. ²⁶

Every compound feed that contains vitamin supplement would contain gelatine; but we are talking about fractions of a milligram from the vitamins side. ²⁷

7.23 There were statutory limits on the amounts of certain potentially harmful ingredients, such as arsenic, fluorine, lead and mercury, which could be included in animal feed. ²⁸ Volume 14: Responsibilities for Human and Animal Health describes more fully the statutory controls on feed ingredients and contaminants.

7.24 Protein concentrates are produced by compound manufacturers in a similar way to compound feeds, generally in the form of protein pellets designed to be mixed with cereals, such as barley, by the farmer. ²⁹

7.25 They were a mixture of various high protein materials, including MBM. Indeed, MBM might make up as much as 25 per cent of the concentrates, ³⁰ which were accompanied by 'detailed written instructions as to how they should be mixed with on-farm material or other materials'. ³¹ When mixed correctly with cereals, the MBM content should not have exceeded 5 per cent of the finished feed. ³² Vol. 12: Livestock Farming gives a fuller description of the feed practices for cattle and on-farm mixing.

The reason for widespread use of MBM in cattle diets

7.26 The need for protein supplements for cows has been well known for a long time. The earliest references to the use of animal by-products as a protein source in animal feed go back to the 19th century; Liebig recommended their use in pig feed in 1865. ³³ In 1908 a book by Kellner on the scientific feeding of animals described an early form of industrial rendering to produce a type of MBM. ³⁴

7.27 In the UK, the use of MBM in ruminant nutrition was well established by the 1920s. ³⁵ MBM was mentioned as a feedstuff in the Fertiliser and Feedingstuffs Act 1926. In the US in 1928, Morrison described the production of MBM and stated that, although this was normally fed to pigs and poultry, when mixed with other feeds it could also be fed to horses, cattle and sheep. ³⁶ During the 1930s and 1940s there were a number of references in scientific literature to the commercial use of rendered meat by-products, for example: as alternative protein for calves in New Zealand; as a supplement to grass for sheep in Australia; and in various experiments on dairy cows, to assess the effect of protein intake and quality on milk production. ³⁷

7.28 During the Second World War, Regulations set out minimum and/or maximum proportions of ingredients to be used in feed in the UK. For example,in 1941 the inclusion of a minimum of 2.5 per cent meat meal or MBM was prescribed, ³⁸ which was later increased for young stock to 5 per cent. ³⁹

7.29 Use of MBM as an ingredient of cattle feed continued to grow post-war after ruminant nutritionists identified that cattle digested some proteins (including those in MBM) more efficiently than they did others. In 1980, the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) published The Nutrient Requirements of Ruminant Livestock. This publication defined two types of protein: undegraded (by the rumen) protein (UDP) and rumen degradable protein (RDP). RDP is protein, such as the vegetable protein found in soyabean meal, which is degraded by micro-organisms in the rumen (the first stomach of a cow). In contrast, UDP is not degraded by micro-organisms in the rumen, but instead moves through to the abomasum (the fourth stomach) and small intestine, where it is digested (see Glossary). Examples of UDP can be found in MBM and fishmeal. Amino acids are absorbed in the small intestine, and are supplied partly from microbial protein resulting from the fermentation of RDP in the rumen, and partly from UDP which has escaped rumen fermentation. ⁴⁰ Amino acids are absorbed and used by the animal for maintenance, growth and milk production. UDP therefore increases potential milk yield.

7.30 The ARC's work meant that optimum formulae for the inclusion of UDP and RDP in cattle feed could now be calculated. The emphasis on increasing milk production led to the use of MBM in place of some of the cheaper vegetable proteins, which had been the main protein source up until then. ⁴¹ From about 1982 the least cost formulation of rations manufactured for dairy cows recommended the inclusion of substantial amounts of MBM. ⁴²

7.31 MBM was also an important source of minerals, providing much higher levels of calcium and phosphorus than other sources of protein. ⁴³ MBM produced without solvent extraction during the rendering process also contained higher quantities of oil, an important source of energy for the animal. In short, MBM gave 'a particular package of nutrients that was useful. It was not necessarily a single issue . . . it was the total package that it provided that made it so useful in a range of feeding stuffs'. ⁴⁴

7.32 With the introduction of price supports for milk and limitations on herd size under the EU Common Agricultural Policy, there was a further incentive to increase the milk yield from each cow. One of the various techniques for maximising yield was to modify the diet by increasing the amount of protein in the feed. ⁴⁵ One way of doing so was to include a greater proportion of MBM in dairy feeds. ⁴⁶ This proportion could not generally exceed 5 per cent of MBM in compound feed, since inclusion at a higher rate made the feed unpalatable to cattle. ⁴⁷

7.33 According to Mr Alan Lawrence of MAFF, in 1988 the annual UK production of MBM was 350,000 to 400,000 tons. Most went into feed rations, of which about 90 per cent went to pigs and poultry and about 10 per cent to ruminant feed. ⁴⁸