December 18, 2007 -- Quebec producers may soon be powering their cars and tractors – or heating their houses and barns – with fuel made from their dead animals if a proposed biofuel project backed by the province’s cattle producers gets government backing.

“(Dead animals) are hard to get rid of (but) they are totally recyclable,” Michel Dessureault, president of the Fédération des producteurs de bovins du Québec, told the traveling commission on the future of farming in Quebec recently. “Traditional disposal no longer functions. We transform (dead animals) a little now or we bury them. It’s not enough.”

According to Dessureault, the solution is to convert slaughterhouse by-products into biofuel. Last month, his organization was awarded $300,000 from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to do a feasibility study on the subject. The cattle producers are one of a dozen rural groups and companies in Quebec to receive research money as part of the federal government’s efforts to promote and encourage the production of alternative fuel sources.

Dessureault says his group has already signed a partnership agreement with Changing World Technologies, a Missouri-based firm that converts turkey leftovers into fuel. The deal is for the construction of a $65 million plant in Quebec that would produce biofuel and fertilizers from dead animal remains.

The company has offered to put up half the money for the project if the Quebec and/or federal governments guarantee the remainder. Dessureault describes the stage of negotiations between all the parties as “very advanced.”

Unlike Western Canada, where the large production of grain is driving interest in plant-based biofuels, Quebec is looking at various schemes that involve mixing animal fats and recycled cooking oils with ethanol and other combustible liquids.  

The Quebec dead animal fuel project will consider uses such as the production of a lower-grade fuel that could be used to run farm machinery or to heat buildings.