ISO 28901:2011

Overview

ISO 28901:2011 - Soil quality: Guidance for burial of animal carcasses to prevent epidemics provides practical, environment‑focused guidance for the burial of infected animal carcasses during disease outbreaks. The standard aims to curtail disease spread, destroy causative agents and ensure safe disposal while limiting soil, groundwater and surface‑water contamination. It does not apply to carcasses from natural death or accidental mortality, and other disposal methods (incineration, rendering, composting) are outside its scope.

Key topics and technical requirements

• Objectives & constraints: priorities include limiting pathogen spread, safe disposal, site rehabilitation and rapid response under constrained resources and local ground conditions.
• Planning of burial programmes: timing of burial, species/disease considerations, and burial volume planning (the document includes an indicative table of average livestock weights and planning assumptions).
• Site selection: guidance to prefer onsite burial (to reduce transport risks) when feasible; sites must be controllable, away from water sources, principal aquifers, main roads and residential areas, not flood‑prone or soft ground.
• Methods of burial: descriptions and evaluation of simple burial, aerobic burial and anaerobic (lined) burial approaches, with discussion of their environmental and biosecurity implications.
• Construction of burial pits: stepwise guidance on site preparation, excavation, lining materials and drainage (including placement of perforated pipes), carcass placement and final coverage.
• Post‑burial maintenance & monitoring: measures for safety, odour and gas control, leachate management, surface regrading, ongoing monitoring, and rules for reuse of burial sites.
• Record keeping & reporting: documentation requirements for burial operations.
• Informative annexes: examples of national specifications, a list of diseases (aligned with the World Organisation for Animal Health/OIE), and design examples for protection layers around drainage pipes.

Practical applications and users

ISO 28901:2011 is designed for use in emergency animal disease management and environmental protection contexts. Typical users include:

• Veterinary authorities and animal‑health emergency response teams
• Farm managers and biosecurity officers responsible for on‑farm carcass disposal
• Environmental regulators and public‑health agencies overseeing site safety and monitoring
• Waste management contractors and civil engineers planning burial pits and drainage controls
• Soil scientists and land managers assessing suitability and rehabilitation of burial sites

Use cases include rapid mass carcass disposal during outbreaks (FMD, avian influenza, etc.), planning burial programmes, selecting safe burial locations, designing pits with leachate control, and establishing monitoring and record‑keeping protocols.

Related standards

ISO 28901 references soil and geotechnical test standards such as ISO 10390, ISO 10694, ISO 11260, ISO 11272, ISO 11277, ISO 13536, ISO 14688‑2 and ISO 25177, which support site assessment and monitoring activities.