NYTimes.com Article: Mad Cow Quandary: Making Animal Feed

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Mad Cow Quandary: Making Animal Feed

 

February 6, 2004

By DENISE GRADY

 

 

 

 

 

In 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.

 

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.

 

Dr. Weber said he did not know what percentage of cattle in

this country are fed animal protein supplements.

 

" On the beef cattle side, the need for animal protein

byproducts has never been high, " he said. " But in the dairy

industry, in order to sustain high levels of milk

production, they have needed these proteins and felt it was

important in high-producing dairy cows. "

 

Dairy producers can switch to soy protein, but it does not

work as well, Dr. Weber said.

 

Tom Cook, president of the National Renderers Association,

based in Alexandria, Va., said his industry was discussing

the issue with government officials and trying to determine

what changes would be needed and what their impact might

be. Rendering is a $3 billion industry, with about 240

plants in the United States and Canada that process about

50 billions pounds of animal remains a year.

 

Rendering yields fats, including tallows and greases, as

well as meat and bone meal. The fats can be made into soaps

and lubricants, and also added to some animal feeds. Most

of the meat and bone meal are used in feed supplements for

animals; 43 percent goes to poultry, 23 percent to pet

food, 13 percent to swine, 10 percent to cattle and 11

percent to other uses, among them the production of feed

for farmed fish.

 

If it was barred from animal feed, rendered material might

lose its value, Mr. Cook said. And yet, he said, the

remains would still have to be rendered, because that is

the best way to dispose of them.

 

" The material still has to be processed, " he said. " If it

doesn't get rendered and find a home, you'll have to build

a lot more landfills and means of disposal not as safe or

environmentally acceptable as rendering. And the cost will

have to be shifted to somebody, I don't know who. "

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/national/nationalspecial2/06FEED.html?ex=10771\

59217 & ei=1 & en=c535ad967ed770b3

 

 

 

 

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