Management of animal carcasses disrupted in several departments due to saturation of rendering plants

These difficulties can be explained in particular by the heat wave at the end of July and the beginning of August, which caused “excess livestock mortality”.

Farmers in several departments in northern France are forced to keep the carcasses of their animals on their farms, due to disruptions affecting the main rendering company in the area, reports France Bleu Besançon. These difficulties, which have been going on since Monday, August 19, are affecting in particular Haute-Saône, Côte d’Or and Haute-Marne.

The Atemax factories are overwhelmed, particularly the one in Vénérolles, in Aisne, which covers the north-east of France. These difficulties can be explained in part by the heat wave at the end of July and the beginning of August, according to Sophie Grégoire, the company’s communications director. “The heat causes excess mortality among livestock, and also degrades the quality of the carcasses that we collect, which are more difficult to process. Our factories are therefore congested.”she explains to France Bleu.

She specifies that the company must transfer its stock to “other companies” And “bury or cremate the bodies.” The time frame for a return to normal “is counted more in weeks than in days” with 800 tons of corpses to process.

As a result, the collection centers have stopped their daily rounds. On Monday and Thursday, they did not make any in Haute-Saône, Côte-d’Or and Haute-Marne, compared to six to seven in normal times. The president of the Haute-Saône Chamber of Agriculture, Thierry Chalmin, speaks of “never seen”.

In the meantime, breeders are asked to “keep the bodies in their farms, as shaded and cool as possible”, he explains to France Bleu Besançon. One of them confides to France Bleu that he is considering burying his animal that died four days earlier, even though the law forbids it, for fear of the smells, “and bacteria and insects that proliferate.”