The Environmental Protection Agency should take control of licensing plants that process waste human food for use as animal feed, an Oireachtas committee heard today.
Representatives of the waste management industry were before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture, as part of its hearings into the recent food crisis in which pig feed was contaminated by toxic substances known as dioxin-like PCBs resulting in the withdrawal from sale of all Irish pork products.
Jackie Keaney, vice-president of the Confederation of European Waste-to-Energy Plants (CEWEP) said the serious questions raised by the pork crisis were how it happened and how such a crisis could be avoided in the future.
“The pork crisis was not just a health, food and economic crisis, it was and is very much an environmental crisis. This means that first and foremost, we must ensure our environmental practices, policies, regulations and infrastructure best serve our citizens, economy and international reputation.“
Ms Keaney said the pork contamination crisis was “the same dangerous incident that has occurred now five times in recent years – each food crisis was caused by inappropriate recycling”.
She said BSE, foot-and-mouth, a pharmaceutical waste incident, the Belgian food crisis and the Irish pork crisis were all caused by inappropriate treatment of waste.
In the case of the pork crisis, food waste mixed with PCB oil ended up in the food chain.
“That such a banned product would be used in the first place, be it by accident or design, is now a subject of investigation. But what warrants equal investigation is a far more fundamental matter, namely how we dispose of food waste and how it is that time and again, contaminated food waste is passing back into the food chain.”
Millstream Recycling in Co Carlow, the plant at the centre of the pig feed crisis, is under investigation after it emerged that such oil had been used in the heating process used to convert waste human food into animal feed. A food-grade oil should be used for this process.
Department of Agriculture officials said during the crisis that Millstream had a licence from Carlow County Council for the process, but was not licensed by the EPA. They said the type of business involved was considered to be at “low risk” for contamination.
Ms Keaney said that to avoid such a crisis happening again, a “good start” would be to ensure that any activity where contaminated, recycled waste could potentially enter the food chain was licensed by the EPA.
“At the moment, these activities are only permitted by local authorities who do not always have the resources to monitor them properly.”
John Ahern, managing director of the Indaver Ireland, which is building incinerators or waste-to-energy facilities in Meath and Cork, said lessons had not been learned from previous food crises and that Ireland was “sleepwalking” into another such food crisis.
“Even before this Committee has got to the bottom of the most recent crisis, Government policy is being advanced that may result in further food crises hitting Ireland again.”
Mr Ahern said he was referring to Minister for the Environment John Gormley’s stated policy of prioritising MBT – mechanical biological treatment – in his waste management policy.
This system, which results in the output of fuel and a biologically treated “compost-like” product which would be spread as fertilizer, could not kill PCBs, Mr Ahern said.
He said temperatures of 1000 degrees were needed to destroy PCBs and that “not only is MBT bad in a food crisis, but it could also be the cause of a food crisis if the compost-like output is allowed to be landspread as the Minister suggests“.
“We have got to put in place robust regulations that force certain waste products, particularly food waste, to be handled appropriately,” Mr Ahern said.
“We have simply got to remove policies and technologies that leave open the possibility of contaminated waste infiltrating the food chain.”
Mr Ahern told the committee incineration was not the solution to all such crises, but that it had a “role to play”.
He said that too often, in contexts such as yesterday’s committee debate, it came down to whether one was pro-incineration or anti-incineration.
A number of members of the committee, including Kerry North TD Martin Ferris, said they had an “open mind” on incineration. Cork East TD Ned O’Keeffe, who is a farmer, said most problems were caused by “bad management” at farming level and that he also had an open mind on incineration.
Labour Party TD for Cork East, Sean Sherlock, said the presentation by the waste groups “reads like an advertisement”. He said he questioned the need for such a submission from the industry, and said unless the representatives could state how such a crisis could be prevented again they were “wasting our time”.
Green Party senator Dan Boyle, in whose constituency Indaver’s Cork incinerator will be based, defended Government policy on mechanical biological treatment and said it had been adopted as the fasted growing method of waste treatment throughout Europe.
He said the industry submission was “one of the most opportunistic presentations I’ve ever seen to any Oireachtas committee”.
“We are all concerned about the dioxin scare and we are all looking for solutions,” he said. Incineration was a technology that resulted in the release of dioxins that had to be disposed of, he said.
Mr Boyle said the industry representatives were not before the committee to address the food scare, but rather to address their own commercial concerns. He left the chamber for a Seanad vote saying he could not wait for a reply from the CEWEP and Indaver representatives.
The industry representatives later defended incineration technology and said the output of dioxins from incineration was just “parts per billion” of the overall chemical analysis.