Meat and bonemeal from slaughtered Irish cattle should be incinerated and incorporated into cement in the Republic, a report to the Cabinet has recommended.
Disposal of the overall annual output of 550,000 tonnes of animal waste, including meat and bonemeal (MBM) - considered a possible source of BSE - has already cost the Irish taxpayer nearly €150 million in the past 2½ years, as much of it has had to be stored or sent abroad.
In future, this material would be incinerated in Ireland, and not in Germany and Britain as at present, should the Cabinet accept the recommendation of the report seen by The Irish Times.
Drawn up by senior officials across four Government departments, along with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food Safety Authority, the report says disposal of MBM - which is separate from high-risk materials such as the spinal cord of animals - was the most practical option.
"The MBM would be used as a substitute fuel in the cement kilns with the resultant ash being incorporated into the final product," it says.
After the rendering of animal waste, 105,000 tonnes of MBM is generated a year. Its build-up began in 2000, when a ban on feeding it to pigs and poultry was introduced. There are 170,000 tonnes of MBM in stores awaiting disposal abroad, which will cost the Government an estimated €34 million.
Irish MBM is used extensively as a substitute fuel in cement plants in Europe.
If substituted for peat here, the annual saving in peat usage would be 300,000 tonnes and Ireland's greenhouse gas emissions would be cut by 250,000 tonnes, the report suggests.
Burning MBM with other material emerged as the preferred option in the report.