From ashes to ashes: Pets to be cremated, not buried

The burial of pets is not a possibility, according to EU law, and a cemetery proposed at Ta’ Qali will consist of rows of memorial walls in which urns holding the ashes of cremated pets will be kept.

The management of the site will be contracted to a private operator.

In the United Kingdom the cost of cremating a pet ranges from £30 (€37) for a very small pet like a hamster, to £150 (€190) for a large one, such as a rottweiler.

This emerges from a Project Development Statement presented by the government to the Malta Environment and Planning Authority.

No burial of pets will be allowed at the new pet cemetery and all carcasses will be incinerated before their ashes are placed in urns which will then be placed in a wall compartment in a memorial area in the new proposed cemetery, or taken by the pet owners.

Each pet carcass will be individually cremated in a cremation chamber to ensure that each pet’s ashes will be collected and removed separately.

The PDS justifies the need for a cemetery as a way to address pet bereavement.

“When pets die, as they must, the shock and grief becomes a very personal affair that we may be unable to share with others,” the document states.

The new cemetery will accommodate the ashes of 17,000 animals. At present 4,000 carcasses are sent annually to WasteServ to be disposed of, and an unknown number are buried by owners on their own properties.

The 1,800 square metre cemetery is being proposed in the Ta’ Qali National Park in an area outside the ring road opposite the large parking area where a flea market operates on Sundays.

The area already designated for a cemetery will be in the vicinity of a proposed guide dogs training area. The cemetery will have a central building which will include the cremation chamber and a freezer.

To avoid firing up the incinerator for each individual cremation, carcasses will be stored in a freezer and burned in sequence.

The cemetery will consist of rows of walls containing urns holding the ashes.

According to the Project Development Statement, one of the advantages of the new incineration facility is that it will serve as an alternative to the uncontrolled burial of animals in unknown locations.

The PDS acknowledges that animal carcasses can already be cremated in another incinerator at Marsa, where pets left at a vet’s clinic are already disposed of. But the PDS claims that pet owners would object to having their pets treated as waste.

The animal cemetery was proposed in Labour’s electoral manifesto.

The previous government had excluded such a development, because this was deemed to be in breach of EU regulations. “What you can do is cremate the animal in Marsa and bury its ashes. But you definitely cannot have a public animal cemetery,” according to former minister George Pullicino replying to a parliamentary question in 2012.

EU regulations consider the carcases of pets as an animal by-product which should be incinerated due to health and safety considerations. EU law allows member states to derogate from the rules to allow the burial of pets and horses but this must be done at a safe distance to avoid any health risks. According to the PDS this option was not practical in Malta.