Rules Issued on Animal Feed and Use of Disabled Cattle

[Guest guest]

January 27, 2004

 

Rules Issued on Animal Feed and Use of Disabled Cattle

By DENISE GRADY and DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

 

 

TThe Food and Drug Administration imposed new rules yesterday to prevent

the spread of mad cow disease, including a ban on feeding cow blood and

chicken wastes to cattle. The agency also banned using dead or disabled

cows to make products for people like dietary supplements, cosmetics or

soups and other foods with traces of meat.

 

The rules, described by Mark B. McClellan, commissioner of food and

drugs, in a telephone news briefing, take effect in a few days, as soon

as they are published in The Federal Register, a spokesman for the

agency said. The quick start of the rules after their announcement is a

departure from the usual slower process.

 

Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of the Health and Human Services

Department, the parent of the food and drug agency, called the rules " a

giant step forward " but said in a telephone interview that even stricter

regulations on animal feed might be imposed in the future.

 

The rules are meant to prevent human exposure to the agent that causes

mad cow disease and mirror the steps that the Agriculture Department

took last month to protect meat supplies. The two sets of changes are a

reaction to the discovery last month that a cow in Washington State had

the brain disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

 

Officials theorize that the cow was infected by contaminated feed in

Canada, where it was born.

 

Contaminated feed is widely believed to have started the mad cow

epidemic in animals in Britain in the 1980's. Scientists suspect that

feed can transmit the disease if it includes bone meal or other material

rendered from the carcasses of sick cows, particularly the brain and

spinal cord. The United States banned the use of cow parts in cattle

feed in the 1990's but let producers feed cow blood to calves as a milk

substitute.

 

Blood can no longer be used, because studies have suggested that it may

also be infectious.

 

Also banned is the use of composted " poultry litter " as a feed

ingredient for cows. The litter consists of bedding, spilled feed,

feathers and fecal matter swept from the floors of chicken coops. The

ingredient that worries health officials is the spilled feed, because

chicken feed can legally contain meat and bone meal rendered from beef.

 

Animals can no longer be fed " plate waste, " the agency said, meaning the

meat and other scraps that diners leave on their plates in restaurants

and that is rendered into the meat and bone meal added to feed. That

material interferes with tests for prohibited proteins in the animal

feed, the agency said.

 

Finally, the new rules say equipment that makes feed with meat or bone

meal can no longer be used to make cattle feed.

 

Consumer groups praised the rules on animal feed but said there should

be even more restrictions.

 

Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, a

consumer group in Washington, said: " This is long, long overdue. I

wonder whether it's too little too late.

 

" They've been legally on notice for seven years that they need to close

all these loopholes. Everything they're doing, science organizations

have requested long ago. "

 

Dr. Michael Hansen, a scientist at the Consumers Union, said, " It's a

good step forward, but it's not good enough. "

 

A remaining loophole, Dr. Hansen said, is allowing rendered matter from

cows to be fed to pigs and chickens and rendered pigs and chickens to be

fed back to cows. In theory, that sequence could bring the disease full

circle, back to cows. In Europe, cows cannot be fed any animal matter.

 

Dr. Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine

at the food and drug agency, said there was no evidence that pigs or

chickens could transmit mad cow disease.

 

Nonetheless, Mr. Thompson said the rules might be changed in the future

to stop such practices.

 

" We're looking at that, " he said. " It's reasonable to say it could be

changed in the future. "

 

With regard to products meant for people, the new rules say that from

now on material from animals that die on the farm or from " downer " cows,

which cannot walk, will be banned from use in cosmetics and dietary

supplements. The ban will also apply to foods with traces of meat, items

that the food and drug agency rather than the Agriculture Department

regulates.

 

Also banned from products for humans will be the tissues most likely to

carry the infectious agent like the brain, skull, eyes and spinal cord

of animals 30 months or older and the tonsils and part of the small

intestine of all cattle. Because a product called mechanically separated

meat may carry infectious tissue, it will also be banned.

 

Dr. Murray M. Lumpkin, principal associate commissioner of the food and

drug agency, said he did not expect any products to be recalled.

Cosmetics carried little if any risk, Dr. Lumpkin said, but " certain

supplements contain as a major constituent cattle neuronal tissue or

other parts from cows. "

 

Because those tissues are not allowed in foods, they should not be

allowed in supplements, either, he said.

 

Dr. Tod Cooperman, president of ConsumerLab.com, an independent

laboratory that tests dietary supplements to see whether they contain

the active ingredients that they claim, said high-risk cow products were

most likely to be contained in " glandulars, " supplements made from

brains, pituitary glands and testicles of cattle and promoted to enhance

muscle and bone growth and to prevent Alzheimer's disease or cure other

disorders.

 

He estimated that $50 million to $100 million of " glandulars " were sold

annually in the United States.