040102 Groups Point to Holes in Cattle Feed Rules

Washington - U.S. food safety regulators should widen a 1997 ban on feeding cattle parts to other cattle to include blood, gelatin and other exempted materials which could spread mad cow disease, consumer groups said on Friday.

The discovery of mad cow disease in a Holstein dairy cow in Washington state has focused new attention on how cattle are raised and slaughtered.

Since the Dec. 23 diagnosis of the nation's first case, officials have repeatedly touted the fact that the infected cow was born in April 1997, about four months before the Food and Drug Administration banned the use of cattle remains as an ingredient in feed for other cows.

However, in industry guidance documents issued in 1997, the FDA exempted from the ban cattle blood, blood products and gelatin, derived from cattle hoofs. The exemptions thus allow some cattle byproducts to be fed back to cattle.

For example, some farms collect the blood of slaughtered cattle and feed it to calves in dehydrated form, said Ronnie Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Association. This is a cheaper source of protein for calves than milk, he said.

The existing feed ban is "not only inadequate but is actually a public health risk," Cummins said.

Consumer watchdog groups want the FDA to expand its feed ban to include cattle blood and gelatin, which theoretically could spread the brain-wasting disease.

"One of the big questions is why haven't they addressed this," said Carol Tucker Foreman, a food safety expert with the Consumer Federation of America.

The existing exemption "seems extraordinary considering that (mad cow disease) could seemingly be passed on this way," she added.

The FDA is "looking at all options at this point" related to changing or expanding its feed ban policies, but has made no decisions, a spokeswoman said.

On Friday, Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, said that 99% of U.S. feed mills were in compliance with the 1997 regulation prohibiting the use of most cattle remains from cattle rations.

Cummins said loopholes in the livestock feed ban end up letting other cattle parts to be fed back to cattle.

For example, he noted that all cattle remains can legally be used to feed chickens, and that poultry excrement swept out of chickenhouses can be fed back to cattle. As much as 30% of such sweepings contain uneaten poultry food that chickens have scattered about the floor, Cummins said.

U.S. investigators are trying to trace the feed given to the infected cow during its first years of life to determine if it might have been contaminated.

Scientists believe that an outbreak of mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, spread in Britain in the 1980s when cattle ate infected feed. Humans can contract a form of the disease by eating diseased cattle.

The current FDA regulations allow cattle brains, spinal cords and other potentially risky material to be ground up and used in feed for poultry, pigs and household pets.

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