The State's only rendering plant approved by the Environment Protection Agency to process specified risk material (SRM) from cattle has already experienced difficulties arising from the BSE crisis.
Cavan-based Monery ByProducts 2000, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, has experienced a build-up of meat-and-bone meal at its plant following the ending of an arrangement which allowed its rendered material to be landfilled in Co Tyrone.
"While we have been asking local authorities or other operators here in the Republic to landfill the meat-and-bone meal we make, it appears that the only options open to us is to store the material or have it incinerated," said Mr John Healy, the plant's operating director.
"In the longer term, this company believes that the national strategic interest would be best served by the construction of an incinerator . . . The meat-and-bone meal we have been producing here is of a very high quality and for the last 12 months when the landfill operation ceased, it has been going to the incinerators on the continent."
Mr Healy said it would be necessary for the EPA to designate a second plant in the Republic to deal with SRM - the skull, brain, eyes, tonsils, spinal cord and the intestines of cattle. "We are very close to our maximum capacity and with the purchase for destruction scheme starting up, there will be a necessity for greater capacity in the system," he said.
Monery By-Products, which is currently completing a £5 million investment programme, is highly automated and strictly supervised by various Government agencies, he said.