What Are Your Obligations?
Under the Enhanced Animal Health Protection From BSE, it is illegal to feed Specified Risk Material (SRM) to any animal since July 12, 2007. This applies to any livestock feed or pet food, whether it was manufactured before or after the July 12 deadline.
As a feed manufacturer your facility and all of your products must be SRM-free before that date. In addition to removing SRM from your ingredients, all equipment (silos, bins, lines, conveyances, etc.) will need to be properly cleaned, with cleaning procedures documented, in order to transition to handle SRM-free material.
It is still legal to feed SRM-free ruminant meat-and-bone meal (prohibited material) to non-ruminants after July 12, 2007. Since 1997, there have been controls around the handling of ruminant meat-and-bone meal. These controls have been expanded under the Enhanced Animal Health Protection From BSE.
Industry targets May 1, 2007 to be SRM-free
As responsible partners in the animal feed system, feed manufacturers have an important role in helping their distributors, retail customers and livestock producers comply with the Enhanced Feed Ban. It is recommended that you begin to use SRM-free ingredients before July 12, 2007 to ensure a reasonable period of time for your customers to clear all products containing SRM from their systems. It is particularly important for manufacturers of bagged feed to plan adequately in order to ensure that all bagged products are out of the feed system in time to have SRM-free bagged products available on July 12, 2007.
ANAC has been working with the Canadian meat packing and rendering industries to support effective industry implementation of the Enhanced Animal Health Protection. In this capacity, ANAC has recommended that suppliers of animal proteins begin to provide SRM-free inputs as early as May 1, 2007.
Working with your customers
As a feed manufacturer you should talk to your distributors and customers about your plans for producing SRM-free feed. You can find out from your customers how long they expect it will take to clear old stock from their systems and discuss how you can work together to comply with the new requirements.
