Cement manufacturers will be allowed to use meat-and-bone meal in cement starting next week, the Health Ministry said Wednesday.
The move is aimed at disposing of the meal and cow corpses in the wake of the mad cow scare.
Calculations show that municipal waste incinerators can only burn around 120,000 tons of meat-and-bone meal a year, far short of the 400,000 tons produced annually, according to ministry officials.
There is also insufficient capacity to incinerate cows that die of natural causes, which total 60,000 tons per year. Incinerators can only burn 25 percent of this amount, the ministry said.
To relieve the surplus, the ministry said it will approve applications from cement manufacturers to use meat-and-bone meal in their products starting next week. The ministry estimates that cement makers could process up to 800,000 tons of the meal per year.
A fact-finding mission of government officials and cement industry officials is currently in Europe to research how cows and meat-and-bone meal are disposed of there.
Around 20 percent of the meal produced each year, or around 80,000 tons, comes from cow carcasses, while the remainder comes mainly from pigs and chickens.