U.S. Nears End of Mad Cow Disease Investigation
By IRA DREYFUSS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The government is banning the use of cattle blood in livestock feed in an effort to ward off an outbreak of mad cow disease.
Other rules will bar the use of cow brains and certain other animal parts in dietary supplements taken by humans.
Federal investigators also said Monday they are winding down their search for potentially infected animals which grew up with the infected Holstein – America’s first and only known case discovered last month in Washington state.
The announcements came a day before a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing on mad cow. Agriculture Secretary Anne Veneman, and the Food and Drug Administration’s deputy commissioner, Dr. Lester Crawford, were to testify.
On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration, trying to close loopholes in its bans on livestock feed ingredients, banned the use of blood in feed for cattle and other grazing animals, including sheep and goats.
The new steps “are intended to provide even greater security,” said FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan.
Farmers have given feed containing blood to calves as a substitute for cow’s milk, which is more valuable and sold for human consumption. But researchers and consumer advocates contended that blood might spread the fatal brain-wasting condition, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
FDA also noted that Americans who spent substantial amounts of time in countries that had the rare human form of the condition, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, are not allowed to donate blood.
The nation’s main defense against mad cow disease is a 1997 ban on giving cattle feed made from the protein or bone meal of sheep or certain other mammals. Such feed is considered the most likely source of infection.
In addition, the FDA:
- Prohibited cow brains and other parts in cosmetics, as well as human dietary supplements.
- Banned chicken waste from livestock feed. Chickens could be fed meal containing cattle tissue. The chicken waste could then be used as a protein in cattle feed, meaning cattle could indirectly be exposed to infection.
- Made factories separate production lines for bovine feed and feed for other animals, as a way to guard against accidental cross-contamination.
- Banned the use of uneaten meat and other scraps from restaurants from livestock feed. FDA said “plate waste” can mask prohibited proteins, making it harder for inspectors to know whether such proteins made their way into feed.
The FDA said it will increase inspections of feed mills and renderers, which process cattle carcasses into meat and bone meal, usually for food for pets and livestock.
Consumer advocates said the new safeguards don’t go far enough.
The rules still let poultry and hogs eat feed made from cattle remains, opening the possibility that a farmer might accidentally give cattle the wrong feed, said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
And USDA’s decision to bring an end to its search for the infected cow’s herdmates “is relying heavily on their belief that only a few cattle that might have been exposed actually became infected,” DeWaal said. “It’s not clear how many animals might have eaten contaminated feed.”
The Agriculture Department’s chief veterinarian, Ron DeHaven, said Monday the department hopes to conclude its search for herdmates of the infected Holstein within days or weeks.
Officials have been looking for 80 animals from the Holstein’s birth farm in Alberta, Canada, which also were shipped into the United States. However, DeHaven said on Monday that investigators narrowed their focus to 25 animals that were most likely to have eaten the same feed as the Holstein, which came from a farm in Mabton, Wash.
DeHaven said 14 of these animals have been located, but all of the other cattle may never be identified, due to poor records and the possibility that some already had been slaughtered. Continuing to search would likely be fruitless, he said.
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