No Beef About Waste
CANADA - French-kissing a cow by gobbling a slice of tongue sausage or tearing the meat off a bovine’s roasted rib remain a favourite human activity, much moreso than nibbling on a bundle of watercress.
10 September 2007
2 minute read
“Unless everyone is going to become a vegetarian tomorrow, solutions have to be designed for the cattle industry to deal with waste,”
Terry Lake
As a result of such dietary tastes, slaughterhouses will continue to exist and produce waste that will have to be eliminated, according to the mayor of Kamloops.
“Unless everyone is going to become a vegetarian tomorrow, solutions have to be designed for the cattle industry to deal with waste,” Terry Lake said when asked about a pilot project to compost slaughterhouse waste in Kamloops.
“It really is an environmentally responsible thing to do and something that helps the agricultural industry.”
For six weeks this fall, one of Kamloops’ garbage dumps — most likely Cinnamon Ridge — will become the testing ground for a small unit to turn meat trimmings into compost.
If successful, a larger, permanent unit may be built.
The need for such a unit is “huge,” according to Merritt Mayor David Laird, a member of a Thompson-Nicola Regional District committee that looked into building such a facility in the southern Interior.
After a facility in Armstrong closed a few years ago, the region’s slaughterhouses were left without a place to process their waste, which had to be shipped to Alberta at a cost of approximately 12 cents per pound.
Building a waste-processing facility in the regional district would give agriculture a much-needed boost, said Laird.
