If they are interested enough to do the following it is my bet that they know much more then what they are sharing with us. They try to play it down, but I feel it is a much bigger issue than they will admit.
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In wake of mad cow, limits on cattle feed
FDA bans use of cattle blood, poultry droppings The Associated Press
Updated: 1:56 a.m. ET Jan. 27, 2004WASHINGTON - The government is outlawing the use of cattle blood in livestock feed and cow brains and other parts in dietary supplements, part of broader restrictions in wake of the nation's first known case of mad cow disease.
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The Food and Drug Administration announced steps late Monday to close loopholes in its livestock feed ban -- a key protection against spread of the brain-wasting disease in cattle -- and to make sure that people don't consume risky animal parts in processed foods and supplements.
"Firewalls have been in place for many years," said FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan. "The steps we're taking today are intended to provide even greater security."
The government maintains the food supply is safe despite last month's discovery of an infected cow imported from Canada, because the animal's brain, spinal cord and certain other tissues -- parts that carry the disease -- were removed before the meat was processed.
Still, the Agriculture Department soon took steps to increase meat safety, including a meatpacking ban on so-called downer cattle like the infected Holstein and restrictions on mechanical slaughter techniques that could contaminate beef with nervous system tissue.
On Monday, the FDA made its own rules for processed food conform with those new restrictions to provide extra assurance that products like canned soups or frozen pizza won't be made with downer cattle or mechanically separated beef.
Also, cosmetics and dietary supplements can't be made with potentially infectious cow parts, FDA said. In recent years, some supplements have claimed to harbor cow brains.
FACT FILE Battling mad cow disease
Steps planned by U.S. officials to help protect the food supply from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)
• 'Downer' cattle
• Test and hold
• Advanced meat recovery (AMR)
• Cattle tracking system
• Specified risk material (SRMs)
• Air stun guns
• Further bans on feed
All cows considered non-ambulatory -- those that cannot walk by themselves -- when they reach a slaughter facility will be banned from human consumption. Even so, the USDA will continue to test them for BSE.
The meat of any animal selected for BSE testing by USDA inspectors will be held until the test results return as negative. (It can currently be sent into the food supply.)
Any animal condemned by inspectors for signs of 'systemic disease' during pre-slaughter inspections is barred from use for food.
In this process, machinery is used to remove muscle tissue from cow skeletons.
The USDA has called for more testing of AMR products, since some outlawed brain and spinal tissue has been found in this meat during testing. The agency will also ban AMR techniques on skulls and spinal columns of cows older than 30 months.
The USDA says it will speed up development of a system already being planned to identify and track all head of cattle in the United States. Groups inside and outside the beef industry have long called for a national tracking system.
Parts of some cattle known to be at high risk of transferring the proteins that cause mad cow disease will be banned from human food.
SRMs will include include brains, eyes, skulls, spinal cords and some other neural tissue of cows older than 30 months. Small intestines of all cattle will be banned.
The USDA also wants better procedures to ensure all these parts are separated from human supply.
Air-injection stunning devices will be banned. These guns use high pressure to ram an air blast, often through a bolt, into a cow's brain, killing it instantly. They make the slaughter process more humane, but can force bits of brain tissue into the rest of the animal, potentially tainting its meat.
The industry has been phasing out these devices and the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service was already working on a rule to prohibit them.
The FDA currently prohibits the feeding of mammal protein to ruminant animals, such as cows, sheep and goats. But the feed can be given to other livestock, and their protein can be fed back to cattle.
The agency may face pressure to strengthen its ban, for example to prohibit the use of all high-risk cattle parts in any animal feed.
Source: MSNBC • Printable version
Worries about feed
But 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 -- because that feed is considered the way the deadly disease originally spread in Britain and other countries.
Critics have long worried about some big loopholes: Cows could be fed blood from slaughtered cattle, usually as a milk replacement for calves. That exemption was allowed even though for years Americans possibly exposed to mad cow-tainted beef in other countries haven't been allowed to donate blood, for fear the disease could spread that way. Last month, the British government announced that a man who died from the human form of mad cow disease may have been infected through a transfusion.
Also, cow parts are allowed in pig and poultry feed -- and until now, chicken waste could be swept up and added to cattle feed, meaning cows could indirectly be exposed.
Among FDA's actions are new rules for cattle feed that:
Prohibit mammalian blood and blood products from being fed to cattle or other ruminant animals.
Ban chicken waste from livestock feed.
Ban the use of uneaten meat and other scraps from large restaurants from being recycled into cattle feed.
Require factories that make both livestock feed and feed for other animals that uses bovine ingredients to have separate production lines to guard against accidental contamination.
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'Mistakes can still happen'
To ensure the rules are followed, FDA this year will increase inspections of feed mills and renderers, conducting 2,800 inspections and contracting with states for an additional 3,800.
The agency's steps are an improvement but don't go far enough, said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the consumer advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest. The main problem: Poultry and pigs can still eat feed made from cow remains, so what's to prevent a farmer from accidentally mixing up the feed?
"They have more protections, but when you get down to the farm level, mistakes can still happen," she said.
FDA's announcement came as Agriculture Department's chief veterinarian said he expects many of the infected Holstein's herdmates will never be found.
The department has been searching for 80 animals that were raised in Alberta, Canada, and shipped to the United States in 2001 with the Holstein that wound up in Mabton.
Veterinarian Ron DeHaven said officials now are focusing on what happened to 25 of the Canadian-born animals raised within a two-year window of the Holstein's birth, because they would be most likely to have eaten the same, possibly contaminated feed. Officials have located 14 of them, he said.
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press.