Mad-cow firewall has gaps, US consumer groups say

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Reuters

 

Mad-cow firewall has gaps, US consumer groups say

 

By Charles Abbott /Tue Apr 18, 8:37 AM ET/

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One of the main safeguards against mad cow

disease, a ban on using cattle parts in cattle feed, is ineffective or

is not enforced strictly, two U.S. consumer groups said on Monday in

light of a new case of the fatal bovine ailment in Canada.

 

Both groups urged more stringent rules on the ingredients allowed in

livestock feed and stronger enforcement of the existing feed ban.

 

"The feed ban is not a firewall," said Michael Hansen of Consumers

Union. Canada's three most recent cases of mad cow disease involved

cattle born after U.S. and Canadian rules against using cattle parts in

feed were announced in 1997.

 

Government officials often describe the feed ban as one of the two

primary safeguards against mad cow disease, which is believed to be

spread through contaminated feed. The other is a requirement for

meatpackers to remove from older cattle the brains, spinal cords and

other nervous tissue most at risk of containing the disease's infective

agent.

 

Canada's latest case, confirmed on Sunday, was a six-year-old purebred

Holstein dairy cow in British Columbia.

 

Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest

said the new Canadian case suggested "there was probably contaminated

feed being served to cattle in the early 2000s, so enforcement of the

feed ban may not have been effective in Canada."

 

"The feed ban is only as good as its enforcement," DeWaal said, in

drawing a conclusion for U.S. regulators. "If they fail to enforce the

feed ban in the factories and on the farms ... then we'll see more

animals" with mad cow disease.

 

An Agriculture Department spokesman, Ed Loyd, responded, "We said very

publicly from the beginning that as we work with Canada we anticipated

that there would be additional cases of (mad cow)."

 

In an email, Loyd said the results of the investigation of the new

Canadian case "will be significant in that it will provide additional

information about how this animal might have become exposed and to

consider how it might affect our risk assessment of Canada."

 

USDA also will take into account "the whole constellation" of mad-cow

measures in Canada, Loyd added, including its mandatory cattle tracking

system and requirement for removal of the "specified risk materials"

that might carry mad cow.

 

Canada ships beef from younger cattle to U.S. markets and sends animals

under the age of 30 months for slaughter in the United States.

 

Hansen and DeWaal said the United States should tighten its feed rule,

which is now undergoing a review. They also called on the

 

Food and Drug Administration

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to ban the use of chicken litter, table scraps and cattle blood in

livestock feed.

 

DeWaal lamented FDA is resisting the call by consumer groups to require

feed makers to restrict equipment, or even entire mills, to making feed

for specific species.

 

Last fall, FDA proposed banning the brains and spinal cords of older

cattle from use in livestock feed. A senior FDA official said those

items contained "90 percent of any infectivity that may be present" so

other steps were not needed.

 

U.S. officials say their most recent case, reported in mid-March, was a

beef cow in Alabama that was born 10 years ago, before the ban.

 

 

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