Analysis of the slaughterhouses in Galicia (NW Spain)

In the last five years, slaughterhouses in Galicia have been producing more than 350,000 tonnes of carcass per year (Ministry of Environmental and Marine and Rural Media (MARM), 2013). The main environmental problems derived from this economic activity are the high consumption of water, the generation of waste water with a high organic load and the intensive use of energy (electricity and fuel) (European Commission, 2005). In this region of Spain, there are seventy-one slaughterhouses but only 10 to 15% of them have a carcass production capacity exceeding 50 tonnes per day (Casares et al., 2006), consequently needing an environmental permit according to the requirements set by the IPPC (Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control) Directive (European Commission, 2008). The slaughterhouses can be specialized in one livestock type, such as pigs, cattle, sheep, goats or rabbits, or they can be polyvalent. In 2009, the most important meat productions were from porcine, poultry and bovine, as they represented 96% of total production in Spain (AICE, 2011). This paper presents a general view of this important sub-sector (according to the Spanish CNAE, National Classification of Economical Activities) of the food and drinking industry in Galicia. The work considers general information about the activity, an exhaustive description of the industrial process (including preliminary operations, processing, final and auxiliary operations), environmental aspects about consumption and emission levels, and finally a proposal of technique candidates to be BAT (best available techniques) for each process stage. This structure has permitted to obtain an inventory of pollution prevention and control techniques, as well as qualitative data of incomes and outcomes of consumptions and emissions respectively. The methodology, which has already been used in previous works (Barros et al., 2008), has been proved to be appropriate to optimize the process considering environmental factors as well as the pollution prevention and control philosophy.