what dairy cows in America are eating

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from the New York Times February 6, 2004

Mad Cow Quandary: Making Animal Feed

By DENISE GRADY

 

Published: February 6, 2004

 

 

n the month and a half since a case of mad cow disease was discovered in

Washington State, Americans have been learning more than they wanted to know

about what cattle in this country have been eating.

 

Though consumers may imagine bucolic scenes of nursing calves and cows munching

on grass or hay, much of American agriculture no longer works that way. For

years, calves have been fed cow's blood instead of milk, and cattle feed has

been allowed to contain composted wastes from chicken coops, including

feathers, spilled feed and even feces.

 

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Most people had never heard of those practices until last week, when the Food

and Drug Administration barred them, saying they could spread mad cow disease.

But the agency did not prohibit other practices that involve using animal

remains to make cattle feed.

 

Though the United States banned the use of cow parts in cattle feed in the

1990's, it still permits rendered matter from cows to be fed to pigs and

chickens, and rendered pigs and chickens to be fed back to cows. Critics say

that in theory, that sequence could bring mad cow disease full circle, back to

cows.

 

On Wednesday, an expert panel advising the government urged a ban on using any

animal remains to make feed supplements for cattle. The European Union has such

a rule, but America does not, and the cattle industry has accused the advisory

group of exaggerating the risk in this country.

 

Europe barred animal parts from cattle feed because scientists suspect that

tissue from infected animals, particularly the brain or spinal cord from sick

cows, can transmit the disease. Contaminated feed is widely believed to have

started the mad cow epidemic that infected more than 180,000 animals in Britain

in the 1980's and has led to the death of more than 140 people.

 

Any decision by the United States to take the panel's advice, barring all

animal protein from cattle feed, could have a large effect on another

low-profile part of the livestock industry: rendering - that is, pressure

cooking on an industrial scale. Protein supplements derived from rendered

livestock are added to feed to help animals gain weight and produce more milk.

 

Decisions about what kinds of rendered animal parts can go into cattle feed are

made by the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of the

agency's Center for Veterinary Medicine, said there was no evidence that pigs

or chickens could transmit mad cow disease. He said the F.D.A. needed to study

the expert panel's report further to determine whether the feed rules should be

made stricter. He noted that the new report had come to conclusions very

different from those in a 2001 report by Harvard researchers that the agency

has relied on to make its rules.

 

When the new report was issued, "I asked the committee, `Help me here, as a

regulator who has to base their decisions on science, and now I'm confronted

with two very different scientific opinions,' " Dr. Sundlof said.

 

"We need to find out what is at the root of that," he added, "before we can

make any decisions different from what we made last week."

 

Dr. Gary Weber, executive director for regulatory affairs at the National

Cattlemen's Beef Association, said the cattle industry was prepared to change

feeding practices if the F.D.A. determined that doing so was necessary.