Top U.S. cattle feeding companies sent 1,000-pound carcasses to a Kansas landfill, where they were flattened by loader machines and mixed with trash, after a June heatwave killed thousands of cows, documents seen by Reuters show.
Neither is a typical method for disposing of bodies. But so many cows died in the unusual heat and humidity that facilities that normally convert carcasses into pet food and fertilizer products were overwhelmed, prompting the state government and cattle feeders to take emergency measures.The mass deaths and subsequent scramble to deal with decaying bodies sparked a push for changes in the meat industry in Kansas, the third-largest U.S. cattle state.
The disposal methods and identities of companies that lost cattle have not previously been reported. They were contained in documents Reuters obtained from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and confirmed by some companies involved. "After you run them over they'll go flat, but they're gonna sponge back up," Theiner said. "You get a mass of 'em and you get on it, and it's like running a piece of equipment on top of a water bed. It moves."
Moving forward, Five Rivers will feed cattle less grain, a high-energy ingredient, and more hay and silage when temperatures rise to minimize their internal heat, McDonald said. The company is not considering other steps like adding shade, he said, because the mass deaths were rare., put carcasses in landfills and buried others in unlined pits with the mineral lime to break down the bodies faster, veterinarian Tera Barnhardt said.
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