Viva! 8 York Court Wilder Street Bristol BS2 8QH Tel: 0117 944 1000 Fax: 0117 924 4646 email: media@viva.org.uk	15 March 2001 Pig Swill must be Banned As foot and mouth spreads to France, Viva! is stepping up its call for a ban on pig swill - the likely source of the current outbreak. Swill - liquid feed made from catering waste - can legally contain pork products, turning pigs into cannibals and risking the spread of disease. The foot and mouth virus can survive in pickled pig meats for one to two months and Parma ham for three to five months. Outbreaks of the highly contagious swine fever in the 1980s in the UK were due to pigs being fed improperly boiled swill; as was swine vesicular disease in the 1970s; and it has been long known that foot and mouth can spread this way. Juliet Gellatley, director of Viva! says: “In the aftermath of BSE, it is astonishing that pig meat is still fed back to pigs in swill. We asked MAFF to ban swill in 1998, if they had listened, maybe the current catastrophe would have been avoided. “History has shown that swill can cause outbreaks of highly infectious and deadly diseases. The refusal of MAFF to ban it shows staggering stupidity.” It is illegal to feed pure pork waste to pigs, for example waste from a meat cutting plant. However, pork products in catering waste remain legal. A MAFF vet told Viva!: “It's all to do with proportion, catering waste will dilute the pork products with vegetables, bread and so on." Viva! believes this position is untenable. Gellatley responds: “either forcing pigs to be cannibals is dangerous or it isn’t. Half measures are unacceptable.” MAFF are investigating whether infected meat fed in swill to pigs at Burnside Farm, Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland is the cause of the current outbreak of foot and mouth. Robert Waugh, the farmer, stated that he collected school and restaurant waste to swill feed his pigs. Mr Waugh said he had not fed the pigs: “anything that had not been served up on bairn’s plates.” Little comfort there as school dinners contain burgers, pork sausages, mince and other cheap processed meat made from MRM (mechanically recovered meat) a slurry made from chicken and pig bones, testicles, rectum, udders, feet and tails. For further information, footage or photos of pig farms contact: Juliet Gellatley or Becky Smith on 0117 944 1000 Notes The Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC) recommended in 1997 that "the risk of TSE transmission from intraspecies recycling of pig and poultry waste be removed at the earliest opportunity". Feeding pigs back to pigs in catering waste is a loophole that risks not only foot and mouth outbreaks but also the development of a BSE-type disease in pigs. By law, swill is supposed to be heated for a minimum of 4 hours at a minimum of 94.3C. Even if this regulation is adhered to, prions - the cause of BSE - would not be killed. 140 farmers are licensed by MAFF to feed swill.