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Animal feed and the food supply, Beef: Delays in mad cow protection
Beef: Delays in mad cow protection The issue: Prions • What they are Proteins that can become malformed and infect cud-chewing animals (ruminants) with mad cow disease. • How they could get in feed Mammalian blood and meat scraps are allowed in cow feed. Cow remains can be fed to chickens and pigs, whose remains can be fed back to cows. • The danger If blood and scraps harbor infectious prions, or if contaminated nonruminant feed is accidentally mixed with ruminant, cattle could sicken and pass along disease. • The solution Ban mammalian material from all animal feed. In 1997, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration required that most protein derived from ruminants (cud-chewing animals) be kept out of feed given to other ruminants. The goal was to keep the feed supply free of infectious prions, proteins thought to spread bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow disease), which has been linked to a fatal brain disease in humans. Although the rendering process can kill viruses and bacteria, it doesn't eliminate all prions. That feed ban was designed to prevent cattle from eating tainted feed, becoming sick, being slaughtered before showing symptoms, and being eaten by a person who then becomes infected. But loopholes still allowed certain risky feedstuffs to be fed to cattle and other ruminants. Ruminant remains--even from “downer” cows, which are unable to walk and at higher risk of BSE--could still be fed to chickens, pigs, and fish. And their remains, in turn, could be fed back to ruminants, creating a cycle that some worry could transmit mad cow disease. There's also concern that nonruminant feed containing infectious prions could accidentally become mixed with cattle feed. Even enforcement of the existing ban has been lax. A January 2002 report by the Government Accountability Office found that more than four years after the feed ban took effect, the FDA still had “not acted promptly to compel firms to keep prohibited proteins out of cattle feed and to label animal feed that cannot be fed to cattle.” GAO investigators identified some noncompliant feed operations that had not been reinspected for two or more years and cases in which the FDA had not cracked down on companies found noncompliant on multiple inspections. “FDA does not know the full extent of industry compliance,” the report said, because its data on inspections are “severely flawed.” We do know that industry compliance with the feed ban has been imperfect. From August 1997 through 2003, 47 companies recalled 280 feed products that were in violation of the federal rules. During that time, the FDA issued 63 letters warning of noncompliance. And in July 2003, the FDA announced a consent decree with one feed manufacturer in which the company officers admitted liability for adulterated and misbranded animal feed and agreed to take corrective measures. With that announcement, the FDA stated that compliance with the feed ban exceeded 99 percent. But in 2004, our research showed, the agency was still sending warning letters. By March 2004, it had recalled an additional 130 products from five more firms for violating the ban. In January 2004--shortly after the first mad cow, of Canadian origin, was discovered in the U.S.--Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson and then-FDA Commissioner Mark B. McClellan promised two new rules to bolster the firewalls against mad cow disease. The steps were to take effect immediately upon publication in the Federal Register, the daily government publication of federal regulations. The rules did the following: • Banned downer cows and animal parts known to harbor the highest concentrations of infectious prions from human food, dietary supplements, and cosmetics. • Banned the use in ruminant feed of mammalian blood and blood products, poultry litter, and meat leftovers from restaurants. Those ingredients were used in ruminant feeds in the United Kingdom before that nation's mad cow outbreak and contributed to the epidemic. The FDA also mandated steps to keep ruminant feed and nonruminant feed from mixing. In July 2004, the FDA put the first rule into effect. But it unexpectedly put the other rule on hold. Instead, it called for public comment, including comment on a new proposal to remove particularly risky cow parts--“specified risk materials” (SRMs), such as older cows' brains and spinal cords--from all animal feed. Such a ban would be stricter but, like any proposal in the public-comment stage, might not result in final regulations. The delay has been widely criticized by consumer groups, including the Consumer Policy Institute of Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports. “The FDA should have taken immediate action on the promises it made,“ says Jean Halloran, director of the institute. “In what appears to be a guise of considering a bigger step, they did nothing.” Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest says, “They have been studying this action since 2002, so the idea that we need more study prior to taking such commonsense action seems absurd.” Carol Tucker-Foreman of the Consumer Federation of America called the delay “inexplicable and irresponsible.” Stephen Sundlof of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine suggests the FDA is postponing a small step while considering a bigger one. He says the agency was swayed by an international expert panel report in February 2004 that suggested steps well beyond those the agency had announced weeks earlier. “The one thing that would have the biggest impact would be getting the SRMs out of the animal-feed system altogether,” Sundlof says. James Hodges, president of the American Meat Institute Foundation, which represents the meat and poultry industry, counters that “there needs to be a risk-benefit analysis and cost-benefit analysis,” adding that there's no evidence of BSE among domestic cattle. “Spending millions or hundreds of millions of dollars for no practical risk-reduction benefit is not good public policy,” he says. He agrees with testing high-risk animals, which must occur after slaughter: There's no way to check whether asymptomatic, live animals harbor mad cow disease. “We've heard every opinion,” Sundlof says. “I would say that in the animal-feed industry there is not unanimity.” However, the agency has tentatively concluded that it agrees with the expert panel and will propose banning all risky materials from all animal feed. When will that ban take effect? Maybe this year, maybe not, according to Sundlof. “These things unfortunately do take a lot of time,” he says.
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