Animal treatment: how to properly bury animals

What are the dangers of biowaste dumps and is it possible to prevent their occurrence.

A large burial of animal remains was found near Krasnoyarsk. They even found tags on them, but it will be difficult to find a company that got rid of waste in this way. Why is it sometimes easier for farmers and meat processors to throw away biowaste than to dispose of it legally, and how many dangerous cattle burial grounds are in the country, Izvestia figured out.

Where they found illegal burial of animals

Activists of the Krasnoyarsk branch of the All-Russian People's Front discovered an illegal dump of biological waste in the Berezovsky district - not far from the regional center. Marina Yakubenko, co-chair of the regional headquarters of the ONF, said that this is the sixth such burial found here over the past four years. Representatives of supervisory departments were invited to the place of discovery.

“The mountain of cattle bones was put in bags, but the dogs had already managed to take them away,” Yakubenko said. “Among the clues are ear tags with numbers, the way farmers usually mark their livestock. We hope that through them the supervisory authorities will be able to find those who did this, because they failed to bring to justice the perpetrators of the previous landfills with biological waste.

She believes that the disposal of the landfill, as in previous cases, will have to be dealt with by the municipality, which will spend budgetary funds on this, since the burial ground was found on undelimited lands.

Yakubenko told Izvestia that the first such burial was discovered in 2018.

“It was a huge ditch in which thousands of heads lay,” recalls the co-chairman of the regional headquarters. - They just dug a hole in the open air, heaps of remains lay in it.

All information about such landfills was immediately transferred to the supervisory authorities, but the culprits could not be found every time.

“Once we even found some document in the forest with the address and name of the entrepreneur,” says Yakubenko. “But, apparently, they failed to prove anything, no one was punished. And even now, the veterinary supervision was skeptical about the fact that tags were found on the remains - it would be difficult to find the owners.

Such burials are found not only in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Last year, a dump of livestock remains was discovered by residents of the village of Komarovo in Tyumen. A little earlier, discarded beef heads were found in Izhevsk. Even legal cattle burial grounds are not always safe - there was a problem with the burial of animals in the Kaliningrad region, and in the Kurgan region they were burned illegally.

Why are cattle cemeteries dangerous?

According to the Ministry of Agriculture for June 2021, contained in the explanatory note to one of the bills, in Russia there are about 14 thousand cattle burial grounds and biothermal pits in which animal remains are neutralized and disposed of. Of these, only 46% are active. And according to data for the same period, there are more than 9 thousand ownerless cattle burial grounds, they do not belong to either local authorities or any organizations. Such animal burial grounds can cause the spread of anthrax and other dangerous infections. At least such risks have been repeatedly stated by scientists who deal with the problems of thawing permafrost in northern Russia. Boris Morgunov, director of the HSE Institute of Ecology, spoke about this to Izvestia, in particular.

“There are quite a lot of such burial grounds on the territory of the country with permafrost, and only a small part is known and mapped,” he emphasized. - A huge number of this kind of burials were spontaneous, made in those years when there was no one to do mapping. We don't even know where they are for the most part.

And in 2016, an outbreak of anthrax occurred in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug - then the disease was found in 23 people, a 12-year-old child died. However, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Head of the Laboratory of Bionanotechnology, Microbiology and Virology of the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Novosibirsk State University Sergey Netesov, confirming the lack of accurate data on the number of animal burial grounds in Russia, calls the anthrax problem solved after all.

“The anthrax bacterium has existed for millennia, many generations of people have fenced and replenished these cattle burial grounds, so we can only estimate how many such burial sites exist in Russia, and they are in all its regions,” he told Izvestia. - There is an assessment and maps of their location in the Ministry of Agriculture.

He noted that anthrax spores can persist in the soil for a very long time, but they have long learned to fight this disease - even Louis Pasteur and his followers invented vaccines against it for both cows and people.

- When was the last time you heard about cases of human anthrax infection? This is exactly what is an indicator of the significance of this problem, - says Netesov. - All doctors of medical institutes know how anthrax manifests itself on the skin, they know how to deal with it. The manifestations of anthrax disease are familiar to doctors, infections are very rare, and how to treat them is well known. The problem is essentially solved.

The burial found near Krasnoyarsk, experts ask to be called not a cattle burial ground, but an illegal dump of animal remains. Still, such formations cannot be called safe, especially since the problem is far from being exhausted by one anthrax.

Advisor to the Chairman of the Russian Ecological Society, expert of the Judicial Expert Chamber of the Russian Federation, candidate of medical sciences Stanislav Chernenko notes that the corpse of an animal buried in the ground can be torn up by another animal, a person can stumble upon it, particles of biological waste can get into the soil with precipitation, from which the pathogen can be transmitted from animal to human. And the problem here is not only anthrax, which is dangerous, but also the most controllable.

“In general, humans and animals have more than 30 common diseases, including anthrax, rabies, brucellosis, toxoplasmosis, and helminthic infestations,” he explained to Izvestia. “Infection spores remain dangerous for decades.

The Ministry of Agriculture told Izvestia that there were no officially confirmed cases of leakage from cattle burial grounds.

According to the director of the All-Russian Research Institute of Veterinary Virology and Microbiology of the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Denis Kolbasov, the danger of such a dump depends on the cause of death of the animals.

- If the cause of death is some kind of infectious disease, which can then spread from these burial sites either to animals or, even worse, to people, this is one risk. If it's just dead animals for some reason, then this is a smaller problem - a question of a different order, he says.

Most often, the expert notes, the dangers are associated with the possible spread of the African swine fever virus.

What is illegal burial? This is not necessarily a hole three meters deep, says Kolbasov. “They can just take it to the forest and throw out the remains. Wild animals have free access to these corpses, which also get sick and begin to spread this plague further. This is the most obvious example. And abstract cases with anthrax are far in the past.

How animal corpses are disposed

of Natalia Skryabina, a member of the Association of Lawyers of Russia, notes that the rules for burying biological waste in animal burial grounds are regulated by Order No. 626 of the Russian Ministry of Agriculture dated October 26, 2020.

- An important condition for the disposal of such waste is to ensure their isolation from environmental objects - soil, water - and to prevent unauthorized individuals and animals from accessing them, - she told Izvestia.

For violation of these rules, liability is provided for under Part 3 of Art. 10.8 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation. According to this article, an individual may incur a fine of 4,000 to 5,000 rubles, and an official - from 20,000 to 40,000 rubles.

— Alternative punishments are provided for individual entrepreneurs and legal entities: individual entrepreneurs — an administrative fine of 40,000 to 50,000 rubles or an administrative suspension of activities for up to 90 days; a legal entity - from 500 to 700 thousand rubles or also suspension of activities for up to 90 days, says Skryabina.

Stanislav Chernenko notes that some subjects of the Russian Federation also separately provide for punishment for violating the procedure for disposing of the remains of pets. In particular, such fines are prescribed in the Moscow Code of Administrative Offenses.

According to him, the practice of handling animal carcasses has evolved over the centuries and has always been aimed at minimizing risks to public health.

“All biological waste is destroyed or disinfected by specialized means and organizations,” Chernenko explained. - Animal corpses are disposed of by processing at veterinary and sanitary recycling plants (workshops) in accordance with applicable rules, decontaminated in biothermal pits, destroyed by burning or, in exceptional cases, buried in specially designated places.

He noted that the danger is posed by ownerless and unauthorized places of burial of biological waste, as well as the failure to take measures for their maintenance and arrangement. However, Chernenko noted, there is already a procedure for registering ownerless objects - it is described in Art. 225 "Ownerless things" of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation.

Why there are problems with burials

Denis Kolbasov notes that the disposal sites have been determined, but the problem is that they can be located at a great distance from the enterprise.

“Not only will they take money from you for disposal, but it’s also up to you how to take it all there,” he explains. - Therefore, there were precedents - people simply took out the corpses on a moped to the forest belt. You need to figure out how much this is available, how much it costs. Because this problem is not from intent, but from poverty. Or greed.

According to him, the costs of disposal can be very significant. At the same time, control is not carried out enough - depending on the region.

“The question is also about the reliability of livestock records,” Kolbasov notes. - If there was a reliable accounting, then any disposal would require supporting documents. If the accounting is adjusted improperly, then problems arise.

Marina Yakubenko says that the disposal of animal remains in the Krasnoyarsk Territory costs from 100 rubles per kilogram, but there is also the problem of their delivery to the place of disposal.

“For example, there is a boning shop in Berezovka, and, according to supervisory authorities, it has an agreement with a plant that processes bones,” she says. - This plant is located at a distance of about 250 km from Berezovka - very far. I am not saying anything, but in the absence of physical, and not documentary control, it is impossible to confirm for sure that the remains are really being taken there. I think that the veterinary supervision and the Rosselkhoznadzor should also check the actual execution of the contracts.

Yakubenko adds that the lack of control also affects in such a way that the veterinary supervision staff who arrived at the dump site simply did not know how many boning shops were in the area.

Yevgeny Lapinsky, head of the livestock and veterinary department of the National Meat Association, claims that there are no problems with the disposal of biological waste at industrial livestock, slaughterhouses and meat processing enterprises.

“At the enterprises, biowaste is either burned, or they are used to produce valuable products - meat and bone meal and fat, which are effectively used in animal feeding and for technical purposes,” he told Izvestia. - Biological waste is also sent for disposal to third-party specialized organizations.

According to him, the disposal of biological waste can even be a profitable business, but the organization of such production requires significant investments and regular supplies of raw materials. But this is relevant only for regions with developed animal husbandry.

— In regions with poorly developed industrial animal husbandry, it is not economically feasible to organize such enterprises, — says Lapinsky. - In such regions, it is necessary to maintain state-subsidized waste plants and organize transport infrastructure for the collection and delivery of biological waste, which the regional authorities are reluctant to do.

He notes that many regions experience a shortage of recycling facilities or long distances make it difficult for livestock farmers to deliver waste for disposal. It is also very difficult to collect biological waste from the population and dispose of it, since the cost of transportation does not depend much on the workload of the body.

- The costs will be almost the same, and for the owner of a personal subsidiary plot (LPS) it is very expensive, - says Lapinsky. - Recycling is quite expensive.

Therefore, he notes, regular deliveries from agricultural enterprises are more profitable for recycling plants - raw materials are usually fresh. If, however, animal remains are collected from various household plots, delivery may be delayed, biological waste will deteriorate and become unsuitable for obtaining products.

- Such waste has to be burned, which is very expensive - the cost of burning can be about 50 rubles per 1 kg of waste, - says a representative of the National Meat Association.

These circumstances, as well as attempts by the owners of household plots to hide the case in order to avoid the removal of other animals, lead to the appearance of remains in unauthorized places. Landfills also appear as a result of the activities of illegal slaughterhouses and meat processing plants.

How to solve the problem with landfills

“To solve the problem with illegal workshops, it is necessary to organize state recycling plants in the regions with the organization of the collection and transportation of biowaste from the population and small enterprises where waste is generated irregularly or in small volumes,” Lapinsky believes. - It is also important to identify and stop the activities of illegal slaughterhouses and meat processing plants.

Strengthening control over waste plants and cremators, he believes, is necessary, as there may be a temptation to "save fuel from unburned biological waste." At the same time, the amount of fines, in his opinion, is sufficient for enterprises.

“But the fines for citizens are small, which encourages them to violate the rules of disposal,” he said. “A commensurate increase in citizen responsibility can also improve the situation with illegal bio-waste dumps.

Chernenko believes that it is necessary to carry out a number of measures “based on administrative and market instruments” that would help reduce existing risks and encourage users of natural resources to efficiently manage biological waste.

Yakubenko notes that the ONF intends to start a discussion on this issue next week with the participation of all supervisory authorities. Meanwhile, last year the Ministry of Agriculture developed a draft law providing for the development of rules for the operation and liquidation of animal burial grounds and the creation of a federal register for them. The unified system proposed by the Ministry of Agriculture should also take into account those involved in the disposal of biological waste.

“In order to improve legal regulation in the field of operation and liquidation of animal burial grounds, the Ministry of Agriculture has developed a bill that provides for empowering the ministry with the authority to approve veterinary rules for the operation and liquidation of animal burial sites,” the ministry explained to Izvestia. - In December 2021, the bill was submitted to the government. The bill is currently being prepared for submission to the State Duma.