Animal By Products Regulations

The Animal By Products Regulations 1774/2002 came into force in 2003 and covers the use/disposal of any wastes that contain meat or animal by products. The Animal By-Products (Wales) Regulations (ABPR) 2006 is the enforcing legislation in Wales. They contain the national standards for AD plants as well as powers for inspectors, approval controls and appeals procedures.

Animal by products (ABP) are classified into three categories:

Category 1 – Highest risk materials and international catering waste. This material cannot be treated using anaerobic digestion and needs to be incinerated or rendered

Category 2 – High risk animal by products. This material cannot be treated using anaerobic digestion unless it has been pressure cooked to the European Standard (133°C/3 bar/20 minutes). However, although the following materials are listed as category 2 material they can be used in AD plants without ABP approval – Manure, Digestive Tract Content, Milk and Colostrum

Category 3 – Low risk animal by products. This material can be treated via a number of routes including anaerobic digestion. This material includes raw meat intended for human consumption, waste from food manufacturers and retailers, eggs, and other by products that do not show signs of transmissible disease. All UK derived catering waste (i.e. from domestic and commercial kitchens) where meat and non meat fractions are combined is also covered as Category 3 material

In order to treat Category 3 material an AD facility must be approved and incorporate a number of criteria. The following requirements are for anaerobic digestion facilities treating ABP to meet the Animal Health rules, other agencies such as the Environment agency are likely to have additional requirements and will need to be checked.

1. Criteria relating to particle size, time and temperature as per the Table below:

2. Treat materials immediately without undue delay
3. Have cleanable and lockable reception areas
4. A non-bypass pasteurisation stage must be included within the plant, unless the time and temperature requirement can be met within the anaerobic digestion reactor
5. Incorporate procedures based on Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) in order to identify and evaluate critical control points
6. Operate strict hygiene conditions including for vehicle movement and physical separation of clean and dirty areas or any sensitive adjacent land uses
7. Record and demonstrate pathogen kill procedures, pest control measures, cleaning procedures have hygiene inspections documented
8. Monitor, sample, record and check Critical Control Points
9. Ensure that all equipment is in good working order and that all measurement equipment is calibrated every three months
10. Carry out microbiological sampling

The Welsh Regulations state that an AD plant handling ABP material cannot be located on the same premises as livestock. This means that there needs to be a complete separation between the AD plant and the farm. A separate area has to be identified with separate access arrangements and no means of cross contamination.

The precise requirements under the ABPR are site specific and therefore early discussions with the Animal Health (the Government's executive agency primarily responsible for ensuring that farmed animals in Great Britain are healthy, disease-free and well looked after) who are responsible for the issue of Animal By Product Approval is essential.

Contact details for local Animal Health offices can be found at: http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalhealth/about-us/contact-us/search/listall.asp. In Wales there are 3 Animal Health offices (the Carmarthen office also deals with Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire regions; the Cardiff office also deals with the Swansea and centre and south Powys regions; the Caernarfon office deals with North Powys and all other areas in Wales).

Local Authorities actually enforce the ABP Regulations and carry out risk assessed compliance visits.

If the plant is approved under the ABPR, the digestate can be spread on land as regulated by the ABPR. Where that land is pasture (land that is intended to be used for grazing or cropping for animal feeding stuffs), livestock must not be allowed access to land to which compost or digestion residues have been applied for the following minimum time periods: (a) in the case of pigs, eight weeks; (b) in the case of other farmed animals, three weeks. Similarly, animals must also not be fed with anything cropped from land to which compost or digestion residues have been applied, for the same time periods (eight weeks for pigs, three weeks for other farmed animals). You should also consult the requirements for land spreading of digestate under the Environmental Permitting Regulations and the PAS 110.

In brief here is the ABPR Approval Application Process

1. Application made by site operator (or future site operator) to Animal Health UK. Of particular importance is the HACCP plan.
2. Animal Health undertake a desk assessment (and in some cases a site visit) based on the information provided in the application. This will lead to either a Yes, No or further advice to achieve compliance.
3. If ‘Yes’ the plant will be formally inspected by Animal Health. The plant must be operational but still cannot receive ABP material. It must be commissioned using material that mimics ABP.Following this a temporary approval is likely to be issued at which point the plant can receive ABP material. Operators may wish to consider commissioning their plant ahead of ABP approval but for non ABP material.
4. From this point all material (digestate) generated by the plant must be monitored and sampled (usually taking around 3 months)
5. Once Animal Health are satisfied that the plant is operating appropriately (on the basis of the monitoring results) the material can be released from site
6. Animal Health then undertake a full review of the plant and procedures
7. If satisfied, a full approval will be granted at this point
8. Under the full approval, not all batches of outputs need to be monitored
9. Any failures in complying with approval conditions are passed to the Local Authority for enforcement action.