03/02/2010

A team from IRMM has won a JRC Excellence Award 2009 for policy support, in recognition of their work on the safe use of animal by-products in animal nutrition.

In the EU, the meat industry produces more than 16 million tons of animal by-products each year. A lot of these nutritional products have to be disposed of at significant economic cost, because a fraction could potentially contain harmful substances. However, the work of the JRC-IRMM has opened the door to the increased use of safe and beneficial animal by-products, while ensuring that potentially dangerous categories of animal by-products are permanently marked to avoid entering the feed and food chain.

The JRC-IRMM identified glyceroltriheptanoate (GTH) as a suitable marker, and developed and validated an analytical method to enforce its correct use by the rendering industry. This important work means that only safe animal by-products can be used in animal nutrition, thus limiting the risk of diseases like BSE – which was largely due to the use in the past of animal carcasses and material unfit for human consumption in the animal feed chain.

Based on these results, Regulation (EC) No 1432/2007 was issued on the 5 December 2007 amending Regulation EC-1774/2002 as regards the marking and transport of animal by-products. This regulation entered into application on the 1st July 2008. As from that date, potentially dangerous categories of processed animal by-products (meat and bone meal and fat) need to permanently marked with GTH at the rendering plants.

Read more about JRC-IRMM's work on a marker for animal by-products and meat and bone meal.


Christoph von Holst describes the team's work on the safe use of animal by-products in animal nutrition during the JRC Excellence Awards 2009 ceremony (21/1/10, Geel).


IRMM team members who received the JRC Excellence Award 2009 for policy support: Federica Serano, Simona Androni, Christoph von Holst, Stefano Bellorini and Ana Boix.


JRC Excellence Awardees 2009 at the awards ceremony in Geel, Belgium on 21 January 2010, together with the Chairman, Director Peter Kind (front-centre).