Recipe for Disaster--Feeding US Calves on Cattle Blood

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Isthmus
Madison, Wisconsin
1/8/04

Nursing new cases of mad cow?
Wisconsin companies benefit from government's decision to exclude blood from
feeding ban

By Brian McCombie

Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) made several regulatory
changes to safeguard the country from mad cow disease following the
discovery of a single diseased cow in Washington state. Among those changes:
Cows unable to walk because of sickness or injury can no longer be
slaughtered and fed to people.

But the terrible irony of the USDA's ruling is that, while people can't
consume downers, calves in Wisconsin can -- in the form of blood from downer
cows.

In Wisconsin and throughout the United States, many dairy farms feed newborn
calves a milk replacer for several weeks after birth. As the name implies,
milk replacer is used in lieu of mother's milk. It contains a variety of
ingredients, including whey (a dairy byproduct of cheese making), vitamins,
minerals, medications, animal fats, and, in many replacers, cow and pig
blood.

In 1997, in the wake of Britain's outbreak of mad cow disease, the Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) decided that feeding rendered cows back to living
cows was too dangerous a practice to continue. After all, it was the feeding
of bovine meat-and-bone meal back to cows that is believed to have caused
the mad-cow crisis in England, which to date has killed about 140 people.

Yet cow blood was exempted from the FDA's ban, meaning it could be, and
still is, used in milk replacers.

"We were shocked by it at the time," says Madison activist John Stauber, who
along with Sheldon Rampton is the coauthor of the 1997 book, Mad Cow U.S.A.:
Could the Nightmare Happen Here? The British (and later the European Union)
banned the feeding of all bovine waste products as the best method to keep
the always-fatal brain disease under control. But in the U.S., calves are
still being weaned on milk replacers made in part from bovine blood,
including that from downer cows.

"From my experience, I'd say most [Wisconsin] dairy farmers probably use
milk replacers," says Jim Goodman, an organic dairy and beef farmer from
Wonewoc who sells beef at the Dane County Farmers' Market. Goodman, 49,
himself used milk replacers off and on in the 1980s and early 1990s. He
switched back to feeding calves with real milk in the early 1990s when he
changed to organic farming practices. At the time, low milk prices also made
it worthwhile to feed milk, especially with his fairly small operation of 40
dairy cows.

But for big operations that milk hundreds or thousands of cows, "the
economics of it have always been in favor of using a milk replacer," says
Johanna Kuehn, marketing director for Merrick's Inc., a manufacturer of milk
replacers headquartered in Middleton. Powdered replacer costs about the same
as whole milk, especially when whole-milk prices are high, and is easily
stored and mixed for feeding. Additionally, replacers can contain
medications against common calf ailments like scours (diarrhea).

Blood in replacer, explains Kuehn, provides a cheap source of protein for
the rapidly growing calves, while the fat economically boosts the energy
content. In 1989, Merrick's became one of the first companies to make and
sell blood-based products in the U.S.

Kuehn notes that calf products containing cow blood are only part of
Merrick's product line, and she is of course correct when she states that,
"Everything we use is 100% cleared by the USDA and FDA." She insists there
is no reason to be concerned that the company's milk replacers could be
spreading mad cow disease (officially bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or
BSE), as Stauber and other critics of these products fear.

As of press time, Merrick's Web site ( merricks.com ) contained a slightly
outdated "BSE Update." It stated that "the safety of United States feed
ingredients is not in question since no BSE has ever been detected in the
U.S."

Merrick's is only one of many Wisconsin companies that make or sell these
blood-based products. Accelerated Genetics in Baraboo, for example,
distributes calf milk replacers that include cow blood and are made by Milk
Products Inc. of Chilton. A quick Internet search finds dozens of
milk-replacer manufacturers and distributors in Wisconsin.

Dr. Michael Greger, BSE coordinator for the Organic Consumers Association,
says the blood for these products is collected at slaughter facilities. Cows
are killed and hung upside down on hooks. Their throats are slit and the
blood runs into collection troughs. The blood is then transported to a
facility where it is separated into blood plasma, and the plasma is spray
dried to turn it into a powder. (Merrick's operates a spray-drying facility
in Oxford, Neb., and assembles its products at a plant in Union Center,
Wis.)

Unfortunately, says Greger, at least 15 studies have found that blood can
transmit mad cow and other mad cow-like diseases. In laboratories, about 20%
of cows injected with BSE-tainted blood eventually got the disease.

The danger posed by blood may be exacerbated by the manner in which animals
are killed. The high-pressure air blasts that slaughterhouses often use to
smash the skulls of cattle can cause brain matter to leak into the
collection trough along with blood, and brains hold the highest
concentrations of BSE infection. The USDA has just banned these
air-injection stunners, but the new rules are not yet in place, and a
similar risk exists for other methods of killing cattle, like driving a
four-inch metal bolt through their skulls.

In 1997, Greger admits, whether or not blood had the potential to infect
animals with mad cow disease "really was a bigger question mark. But as the
years have gone by and the research has accumulated, the FDA hasn't made a
change [in its rules]. The fact that we're still feeding cow blood back to
cows is just crazy."

Greger says the FDA reviewed the blood exemption in 2001, but still kept in
it place. That same year, the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis reviewed the
various regulations that were supposed to keep BSE cow out of the United
States. The center concluded that "recycling this material [cow blood] poses
little risk of exposing cattle to" mad cow disease.

The British and Europeans obviously don't agree: They prohibit the use of
cow blood in products that might be fed back to cows. So while Merrick's
sells milk replacers made with cow blood in Wisconsin and worldwide, it
can't sell these products in Britain or Europe.

It's noteworthy, too, that the FDA asked U.S. blood centers to screen out
donors who have spent significant time in countries with mad cow, fearing
people with human mad cow disease could spread it to others. Recently,
doctors in Great Britain announced what could well be the first case of
human mad cow contracted from a blood transfusion.

What should be done? Stauber wants a total ban on the use of bovine blood in
calf products, and the Organic Consumers Association is petitioning to have
the practice stopped. So far, neither FDA nor USDA have addressed the issue.

Ironically, it might be foreign beef markets that close this cow blood
loophole. Already, at least 36 countries have shut their borders to U.S.
beef. Stauber thinks this may create the kind of pressure for change that
the federal government and the U.S. beef industry cannot counter simply by
offering their assurances that the U.S. meat supply is safe.

"It might fool American consumers into believing everything's in place to
make us as safe as possible from mad cow," says Stauber. "But there's just
no way they'll be able to bully foreign markets into buying our beef until
they shut down these feeding practices."

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