The European Council agreed a revised version of the Animal By-Product Regulation (ABPR) earlier this month (October 12) which in effect means that cooked items such as sausage rolls or sandwich ham will no longer have to be treated using anaerobic digestion, in-vessel composting or incineration, as regulation previously required. Instead, from March 4 2011, retailers will be able to send them to landfill - a change which makes permanent a temporary derogation - or exemption - from the ABPR that was previously in place and which will save UK retailers millions of pounds each year.

In addition stores which produce less than 20 kilograms of raw ABP waste (eg. raw meat and fish) per-week will not need to pay hazardous waste specialists for disposal. They will now be permitted to dispose of it in the same way as non-animal waste.

Commenting on the importance of these changes, Sally Barber, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) Food Policy Adviser, said: "This is a sensible decision. The risk to animal and human health posed by waste Animal By-Products is extremely small. There was no real reason why retailers were prevented from dealing with small quantities of these products in the same way as households or catering businesses.

"This decision saves retailers millions of pounds by freeing them from the cost of arranging specialist waste disposal for small amounts of, what is, low-risk material. It will also allow some retailers to expand the range of foods they offer to consumers by bringing down the cost of disposing of any left-over product. "In the current tough trading environment the savings created by this change in regulation are most welcome. We're pleased Defra has listened to our arguments and done the right thing for British retailers."

On the potential impact to landfill the BRC believes the quantity of waste that will be disposed of in this way as a result of this decision is not sufficient to adversely effect the retail industry's achievement in halving the amount of waste it sends to landfill; less than a quarter of waste produced by retailers is now sent to landfill compared with almost 50 per cent in 2005.