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Meat and Bone Meal |
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 Meat and bone meal (MBM) is a product of the rendering industry. It is typically about 50% protein, 35% ash, 8-12% fat, and 4-7% moisture. It is primarily used in the formulation of animal feed to improve the amino acid profile of the feed. Feeding of MBM to cattle is thought to have been responsible for the spread of BSE (mad cow disease). In most parts of the world, MBM is no longer allowed in feed for ruminant animals. However, in some areas, including the US, MBM is still used to feed monogastric animals. It is widely used in the United States as a low-cost meat in dog food and cat food.
In Europe, some MBM is used as ingredients in petfood but the vast majority is now used as a fossil-fuel replacement for renewable energy generation, as a fuel in cement kilns, landfilling or incineration.
Meat and bone meal has around two thirds the energy value of fossil fuels such as coal; the UK in particular widely uses meat and bone meal for the generation of renewable electricity. This was particularly prominent after many cattle had to be slaughtered during the Mad Cow Disease crisis.
Meat and bone meal is increasingly used in cement kilns as an environmentally sustainable replacement for coal.
Mad-Cow Disease
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as Mad-Cow Disease (MCD), is a fatal, neurodegenerative disease in cattle, that causes a spongy degeneration in the brain and spinal cord and also causes red eyes. BSE has a long incubation period, about 4 years, usually affecting adult cattle at a peak age onset of four to five years, all breeds being equally susceptible. In the United Kingdom, the country worst affected, more than 179,000 cattle have been infected and 4.4 million slaughtered during the eradication programme.
It is believed by most scientists that the disease may be transmitted to human beings who eat the brain or spinal cord of infected carcasses. In humans, it is known as new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD or nvCJD), and by April 2008, it had killed 164 people in Britain, and 40 elsewhere with the number expected to rise because of the disease's long incubation period. Between 460,000 and 482,000 BSE-infected animals had entered the human food chain before controls on high-risk offal were introduced in 1989.
A British inquiry into BSE concluded that the epidemic was caused by cattle, who are normally herbivores, being fed the remains of other cattle in the form of meat and bone meal (MBM), which caused the infectious agent to spread. The origin of the disease itself remains unknown. The infectious agent is distinctive for the high temperatures at which it remains viable; this contributed to the spread of the disease in Britain, which had reduced the temperatures used during its rendering process. Another contributory factor was the feeding of infected protein supplements to very young calves.
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