A five-week trial was approved by the Environment Agency

SembCorp Utilities now wants to burn a further 100,000 tonnes of tallow at its Wilton power station, near Redcar.

The Environment Agency approved a five-week trial, saying the risk to public health was negligible.

The company says it wants to burn the additional tallow over a 12 month period.

The tallow is from cattle culled as part of the 30 month scheme, put in place by the then Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food in 1996, to support the beef market in the UK in the wake of the BSE outbreak.

Monitoring results

Under the scheme, cattle aged over 30 months were taken out of the food chain even if they had not shown signs of BSE.

An Environment Agency spokesman said: "We have received the company's report of the trial outlining their view of outcomes versus the critical success factors we set for the trial.

"We will be looking in detail at the performance against these factors, including the monitoring results collected throughout the trial, to determine whether the company can proceed with a continuous burn."

A SembCorp Utilities (UK) spokesman added: "We have recently submitted a report to the Environment Agency and if permission is granted we plan to burn around 100,000 tonnes of tallow over the next 12 months."