Copyright 2004 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest Global Communications Corp. All Rights Reserved Ottawa Citizen
December 16, 2004 Thursday Final Edition
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A4
LENGTH: 483 words
HEADLINE: Animal parts found in cattle feed: Secret tests uncover undeclared ingredients
BYLINE: Chad Skelton, The Vancouver Sun
DATELINE: VANCOUVER
BODY:
VANCOUVER - A series of secret tests on cattle feed conducted by the federal government earlier this year found more than half the feed tested contained animal parts not listed in the ingredients, according to internal documents obtained by the Vancouver Sun.
The test results raise troubling questions about whether rules banning the feeding of cattle remains to other cattle -- the primary way in which mad cow disease is spread -- are being routinely violated.
According to internal Canadian Food Inspection Agency documents -- obtained through the Access to Information Act -- 70 feed samples labelled as vegetable-only were tested by the agency between January and March of this year. Of those, 41 (59 per cent) were found to contain "undeclared animal materials."
"The presence of animal protein materials (in vegetable feeds) may indicate ... deliberate or accidental inclusion of animal proteins in feeds where they are not supposed to be," said an internal memo to the president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency last April that described the test results as "worrisome."
The memo, from Sergio Tolusso, feed program co-ordinator for the agency, said the contamination could also have been caused inadvertently -- for example, through the transporting of different feeds in the same trucks.
Controlled experiments have shown an animal needs to consume as little as one milligram of infected material -- about the size of a grain of sand -- from an animal with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) to develop the brain-wasting disease.
Michael Hansen, an expert on mad cow disease with the U.S.-based Consumers Union, the independent research institute that publishes Consumer Reports, said the tests are troubling.
"The fact that stuff that is labelled as vegetable feed, that 59 per cent of it has animal material, that's incredibly high," said Mr. Hansen, who has a PhD in biology. "This should be a wakeup call to CFIA. It doesn't look good."
Michael McBane, national co-ordinator for the Canadian Health Coalition, a watchdog group, said the tests suggest the feed ban is not being adequately enforced.
"It demonstrates the fact that the ban is basically meaningless," Mr. McBane said. "It's pretty well recognized that we have mad cow disease in Canada because of contaminated feed. It's the frontlines in the battle to stop the spread."
Consumption of beef from cows infected with BSE has been linked to the development in humans of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), a deadly brain-wasting illness.
In addition to concerns over testing, the inspection agency documents also reveal problems with the feed mills that produce animal feed.
There are about 550 commercial feed mills in Canada.
According to a memo to the agency president Dick Fadden last March, an initial inspection last year of several hundred of those mills found 21 per cent were not complying with federal regulations.
LOAD-DATE: December 16, 2004
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Copyright 2004 Plain Dealer Publishing Co. Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
December 17, 2004 Friday Final Edition; All Editions
SECTION: NATIONAL; Pg. A19
LENGTH: 788 words
HEADLINE: Case scientists find biological ruse of mad cow disease
BYLINE: John Mangels, Plain Dealer Science Writer
BODY:
With its harsh chemicals and dense protective walls, the digestive system mounts a formidable defense against food-borne invaders.
So how does the particle in tainted beef that causes the human version of mad cow disease manage to get by unscathed?
It does what any good commando would - it links up with an escort that safely whisks it past the intestine's cellular sentries, according to new research from Case Western Reserve University.
The study, published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience, demonstrates for the first time a tactic that the infectious proteins known as prions use to penetrate the digestive system's extensive security barriers.
Once past, they can gain access to the bloodstream and, eventually, the central nervous system. There, dark gummy clusters of the malformed prions render the human brain a sponge-like mess. There currently is no prevention or cure.
Scientists say the study is intriguing and suggests possible ways to block prions' stealthy entrance strategy.
"This is exactly the kind of thing we're hoping to learn," said Michael Nunn, infectious diseases program director at the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke, which supported the Case research. "It's helping to unravel things in this field that have long been mysterious."
"It's a good start for understanding how prions travel in our body," added molecular biologist Giuseppe Legname, a member of the University of California, San Francisco lab that originally identified prions as the culprit in human and animal brain-wasting diseases like mad cow. "This work opens up a new possible drug target for the treatment of (prion) diseases."
About 150 people worldwide have died from eating beef contaminated with mad cow prions. None of the cases is believed to have originated in the United States, and the government regularly tests the nation's beef supply. Public health officials still are concerned about the disease's spread, and the emerging threat of prion disease in wild deer and elk.
The human digestive system has elaborate - though not entirely foolproof - measures to regulate the absorption of nourishment and prevent the intake of harmful contaminants.
After stomach acids liquefy a meal, powerful enzymes in the small intestine complete the breakdown of nutrients by chemically scissoring up their long ribbons of protein molecules.
The intestines are lined with a mesh of protective cells. They're tightly connected to prevent anything from crossing through to the bloodstream without approval. Gatekeepers called receptors on the intestinal cells' surface control entry and exit.
Until the Case study, scientists knew very little about how the relatively large prions managed to circumvent these roadblocks. "It's kind of amazing that, given the molecular mass of the (prion), it would be able to go through because the intestine is very, very selective," said associate professor of pathology Dr. Neena Singh, who led the research.
So working in a biosafety lab, Singh's team set up a model of the digestive process, using the same caustic chemicals and hothouse temperatures present in the human gut.
Then they introduced samples of brain tissue from a man who died of the kind of brain-wasting disease that prions cause, and watched what happened.
Digestive enzymes slice most proteins to bits, but the prions escaped with only a few nicks - probably, Singh said, because their misshapen folds shield most of their vulnerable spots.
Tests showed that the prions also made it past the cells that Singh and her colleagues used to simulate the intestinal wall. The researchers were surprised to see that the prions didn't cross the barrier alone.
They had somehow joined with another protein called ferritin, one that's present in abundance in a typical serving of beef. The human body uses ferritin to store excess iron until it's needed. Because it's a vital protein, it's on friendly terms with the intestine's sentry cells and regularly gets passed through.
Apparently by piggybacking on ferritin, prions slip by too, although the exact mechanism is still unknown. Singh said it's possible prions take advantage of other, as yet undiscovered "carrier proteins" similar to ferritin to foil the intestinal barrier.
Figuring out how to break up the ferritin-prion pairing - in essence, separating the wolf from its sheepskin - might prevent the mad cow protein from getting absorbed and starting on its lethal journey to the brain. That's one of several avenues Singh and her team intend to pursue.
"I think this is the first step toward our understanding of (prion) transport," she said. "The major contribution is the prevention of transport itself, so you never get the disease."
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: jmangels@plaind.com, 216-999-4842
LOAD-DATE: December 18, 2004
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Copyright 2004 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
December 19, 2004 Sunday Home Edition Correction Appended
SECTION: @issue; Pg. 1D
LENGTH: 1543 words
HEADLINE: SCIENCE: For humans, a new scare linked to beef
BYLINE: DAVID WAHLBERG
SOURCE: AJC
BODY: Despite what federal health officials have said, a fatal illness similar to human mad cow disease could also come from eating meat, according to new studies.
The studies, from Europe, follow other research suggesting the illness may be more widespread than officials say, possibly accounting for some misdiagnosed cases of Alzheimer's disease.
The unsettling claims resonate after last month's mad cow scare, when a cow that would have been the nation's second known to have the disease eventually tested negative, after two preliminary positive tests. And locally, the illness similar to human mad cow gained attention in September, when more than 500 patients at Emory University were told they may have been exposed by surgical instruments used on an infected patient.
Both human conditions are known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. A form called "variant" CJD, the known human version of mad cow, comes from infected cattle. Health officials say the other form, "sporadic" CJD, occurs spontaneously and does not occur in beef.
Both are fatal and have similar symptoms: loss of balance, memory and mental control. Variant CJD has killed about 150 people in Great Britain and a few in other countries since 1995. Sporadic CJD is thought to claim about 300 Americans a year.
The new European studies say beef could cause some cases of sporadic CJD. The troubling assertion, published in prominent medical journals, joins a growing list of findings challenging assumptions about both forms of the disease: the first-ever cases of variant CJD spread by blood transfusion; clusters of sporadic CJD some suspect are linked to meat; and studies suggesting that some Alzheimer's patients may actually have CJD.
Officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who say there is no proof that sporadic CJD comes from meat, downplay the European studies because they involve tests on animals, not humans. But other experts in prions --- the mysterious, misshapen proteins believed to cause both forms of CJD and mad cow --- say the uncertainty of the science should prevent officials from dismissing the possibility that beef could have something to do with sporadic CJD.
"It's not as straightforward as some have led people to believe," said Dr. Patrick Bosque, a University of Colorado neurologist and former lab colleague of Dr. Stanley Prusiner, who won a Nobel Prize in 1997 for discovering prions.
"There's an effort from the beef industry and government spokesmen to say that just because somebody with CJD doesn't have variant CJD, it could not have come from animals," Bosque said. "That's certainly an overstatement of what we know, and these studies back that up."
If some sporadic CJD is proved to come from meat, the toll is likely to be small, Bosque and others say. The rate of reported sporadic CJD appears to be holding steady in the United States, England and elsewhere --- proof, the CDC says, that infected meat hasn't sparked a surge.
But others aren't so sure. The U.S. system of tracking CJD could be missing many cases, they say. Doctors generally don't have to report the disease, and autopsies often aren't performed to confirm it.
"In the United States we don't really actively do surveillance," said Dr. Rudy Castellani, director of brain pathology at Michigan State University. "Exactly what the incidence is, nobody really knows."
Genetic peculiarity
One of the studies questioning the conventional wisdom about CJD and beef was published last month in the journal Science. It dealt with a genetic peculiarity: everyone known to die from variant CJD has had a particular genetic profile, called MM, found in 40 percent of the population.
Researchers from London studied mice engineered to carry human prion genes; some with a different genetic profile than MM developed sporadic CJD.
Two years ago, a team led by Dr. John Collinge infected mice carrying the MM genetic profile with mad cow. Most got variant CJD, as expected, but some developed a surprise: sporadic CJD.
"It is therefore possible," the scientists wrote, "that some patients . . . with sporadic CJD may have a disease arising from [mad cow] exposure."
The National Cattlemen's Beef Association, which has said beef doesn't cause sporadic CJD, conceded that the research "raises the possibility," but said the results have not been replicated.
A third study, published in March in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looked at cows that died, apparently from mad cow. Two were found to have had a different form of the disease resembling sporadic CJD. Unusual types of mad cow disease have also been reported in France and Japan.
Observers say the European studies suggest that some sporadic CJD deaths in the United States and elsewhere could be caused by meat, even though the risk remains theoretical.
"We need to question this assumption that [mad cow disease] always looks the same and always causes variant CJD in people," said Michael Hansen, senior research associate for Consumers Union, publisher of Consumers Report magazine. "The science is clear that it is more complicated."
Dr. James Sejvar, a CDC brain disease epidemiologist, said the European studies deserve attention. But "there's a great leap between animal results and human data," he said. Similar human studies can't be done, however, because ethics rules prohibit the deliberate infection of people with prions.
Blood as a pathway
Two variant CJD cases in England linked this year to separate blood transfusions demonstrate what scientists had previously only speculated: prions can be transmitted through blood. Health officials are now on the alert for other possible cases stemming from transfusions.
One of the blood-related cases also backs up the genetic profile data found by the London researchers. An elderly woman who died of an unrelated condition was found upon autopsy to have variant CJD. The woman was among the 60 percent of people without the MM genetic profile, making her the first known case of variant CJD without that marker --- and possibly a harbinger of more to come.
In the past decade, CJD clusters in the United States have also raised questions about possible links between sporadic CJD and meat. In one cluster reported this fall in Kingston, N.Y., three cases of CJD and another possible victim --- two of whom had undergone back surgery at the same hospital --- were investigated by state health officials. But the officials said none of the cases were related.
Earlier this year, the CDC looked into 17 suspected CJD deaths over several years connected to the Garden State Racetrack in Cherry Hill, N.J., where those who died had reportedly eaten meat. The CDC ruled out the disease in three cases and found the others to be of unknown origin: sporadic CJD.
Similar investigations have discounted any links in clusters in nearby southeastern Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Researchers have also failed to find proof of CJD clusters possibly linked to chronic wasting disease --- a mad-cow-like condition found in elk and deer in the Colorado-Wyoming area and parts of the Midwest.
Another puzzle complicating the CJD picture: autopsy studies. Some suggest that up to 13 percent of people diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease while alive may actually have CJD. Alzheimer's has similar symptoms, though the progression of the illness is usually longer.
A study in 1989 by Dr. Laura Manuelidis, chief of brain pathology at Yale University, found that six of 46 cases, or 13 percent, thought to be Alzheimer's were proved upon autopsy to be CJD. A similar study the same year at the University of Pittsburgh found that three of 54 patients, or 6 percent, diagnosed with dementia had CJD.
True tally unknown
The cases were complicated and may not reflect the general population, Manuelidis said. And doctors have gotten better at diagnosing Alzheimer's and CJD since the '80s.
But even a smaller percentage would be significant, Manuelidis said. If one-tenth of 1 percent of the estimated half-million Alzheimer's cases in the United States each year turned out to be CJD, that would be 5,000 cases.
Without more autopsies or a better surveillance system, Manuelidis said, the true CJD tally remains an open question. "If you don't look for something, you're not going to find it," she said.
CJD is not one of the diseases physicians must report nationwide, but health officials keep tabs through death certificates, said the CDC's Sejvar. Autopsies may not always be done, but most doctors properly spot CJD symptoms and record the disease on death certificates, he said.
The CDC also encourages physicians to send tissue samples from possible CJD cases to the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center in Cleveland, which can confirm CJD and identify forms of the disease.
Even though officials at the lab say they receive samples from less than half of this country's CJD cases, Sejvar said the overall system works.
"Are we capturing all the cases by this method? Probably not," Sejvar said. "Are we capturing the vast majority of them? Yes, we are."
David Wahlberg covers medical issues and the CDC for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
CORRECTION-DATE: December 21, 2004 Tuesday
CORRECTION: An article in Sunday's @issue section about Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease gave an incorrect number of cases if one-tenth of 1 percent of the estimated half-million Alzheimer's cases in the United States turned out to be CJD cases. The correct number of cases is 500.
GRAPHIC: Graphic: HOW A PRION INFECTS A prion is a protein believed to replicate itself and cause diseases, even though it contains no DNA or RNA. Bacteria, viruses and other known infectious agents need those genetic materials to reproduce. Prions can lie dormant for many years in humans or animals before causing disease. 1. Prion attaches to normal protein 2. Normal protein turns into a prion 3. Prions multiply and convert more normal proteins 4. Amount of prion protein increases to dangerous level In 1997, U.S. scientist Stanley Prusiner was awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of prions. PRION DISEASES are fatal, usually killing within a year after symptoms, which include rapid loss of memory, balance and mental function. The diseases include: * Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, in cattle * Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in people (variant CJD from infected cows; sporadic CJD in which the cause is unknown) * Chronic wasting disease in deer and elk * Scrapie in sheep Sources: University of California, National Institutes of Health, Scientific American, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention / Knight Ridder Tribune; Photo: A cow peers out of a trailer as it arrives at a slaughterhouse in Wilbur, Wash., in this January 2004 photo. New studies done in Europe say a fatal illness similar to human mad cow disease could also come from eating beef. / TED S. WARREN / File
LOAD-DATE: December 22, 2004
UPI
November 24, 2004 Wednesday 4:34 PM EST
LENGTH: 936 words
HEADLINE: Experts doubt USDA's mad cow results
BYLINE: STEVE MITCHELL
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Nov. 24
BODY:
U.S. Department of Agriculture officials said a cow that initially tested positive for mad cow disease was found to be negative on follow-up tests, but both domestic and international experts told United Press International the way the agency handled the situation leaves them skeptical about the validity of the results.
"The testing process does indeed make experts scratch their heads," said Markus Moser, a molecular biologist and chief executive officer of the Swiss firm Prionics, which manufactures tests for detecting mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
"I think some, but not all, BSE people internationally have some degree of cynical de facto doubt about everything the United States does or doesn't do, mostly as a result of seeing so many similar situations where countries at risk deny and deny and deny and then end up having big problems," said Elizabeth Mumford, a veterinarian and BSE expert at Safe Food Solutions in Bern, Switzerland, a company that provides advice on reducing mad cow risk to industry and governments.
Several countries, including Germany and Austria, that had been thought to be free of the disease, found out it was circulating in their herds after they initiated large-scale testing.
The U.S. cow in question tested positive last week on two so-called rapid tests manufactured by Bio-Rad Laboratories in Hercules, Calif. The USDA said Tuesday the animal had tested negative on more sophisticated confirmatory tests called immunohistochemistry or IHC tests.
John Clifford of the USDA said in a statement that the negative IHC results "makes us confident that the animal in question is indeed negative."
A U.S. veterinarian knowledgeable about mad cow tests told UPI that experts she has spoken with are "very, very skeptical about" the USDA's negative test result.
The veterinarian, who requested anonymity because she feared repercussions for speaking out against the USDA, said the skepticism arose because the agency did not run another kind of mad cow test called a Western blot. The test sometimes can pick up positive cases that IHC misses and the agency has used it in the past to rule out suspect cases.
Moser said a Western blot test would make sense for the United States, where the prevalence of mad cow is thought to be low. Other countries -- including Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Mexico -- that are either free of the disease or have low rates, have elected to use the Western blot as part of their surveillance programs, he said.
The veterinarian said concerns also have emerged because the USDA has not made a sample from the cow in question available for examination by outside experts. She added that the USDA did not notify state officials, as officials previously said they would about positive results on rapid tests.
Knowledgeable people are saying "wait a minute, this doesn't add up here," the veterinarian said.
At stake is the $70 billion U.S. beef industry, including a $3.3 billion export market. More than 60 countries, including Japan, closed their borders to U.S. beef last December after the first -- and so far only -- U.S. case of mad cow was detected.
Asked whether state officials were notified, USDA spokesman Ed Loyd told UPI the agency had not released any information about the cow in question. Loyd also said the false positives on the rapid test were not unexpected. Since June, the USDA has reported three false positives out of more than 121,000 cows tested.
Bio-Rad spokeswoman Sam Kennedy told UPI the company was unfamiliar with the details of this incident and thus could not comment.
Mumford said experts were surprised the USDA did not send samples from the cow in question for independent analysis by one of the three worldwide labs recognized as the foremost authorities on mad cow testing by the World Animal Health Organization. One of these facilities is located in Weybridge, England, where the USDA had sent the first U.S. case of mad cow disease for confirmation in December 2003.
Loyd said USDA officials who would know whether USDA planned to release a sample for verification by an outside party could not be reached Wednesday.
"Full transparency and cooperation would certainly promote the idea internationally that the U.S. is doing everything it can do," Mumford said. "But somehow the U.S. consumer doesn't seem to think that way, or has been appeasable at least up until now, so there seems to be no impetus to do anything more."
The concern is humans can contract a fatal brain illness known as variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease from eating beef products contaminated with the mad cow pathogen.
Moser said despite USDA's reliance on the IHC test results, repeated negatives on that test does not necessarily rule out the cow being infected.
"The reason for this is that the IHC test ... is done on a different piece of tissue" than that used for the rapid test, he said. Prions, the pathogen thought to cause mad cow disease, tend to concentrate in a region of the brain called the obex, so the different outcomes of the different tests could be due to sampling a brain region that contains little or no prions.
This could be made worse if the animal had lay dead for several days before its brain was collected. The brain might be so degraded that it would be difficult to locate the obex region for confirmatory testing and a sample might mistakenly be taken from a region that contains no prions.
"So with these samples, the confirmatory testing would be even less reliable, not because of the confirmatory test itself, but because of the sampling," he said.
E-mail sciencemail@upi.com
LOAD-DATE: November 25, 2004
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Copyright 2004 AScribe Inc. AScribe Newswire
December 7, 2004 Tuesday
LENGTH: 888 words
HEADLINE: When It Comes to Food Safety, Who's Watching the Watchdogs? Initiative, Web Site Will Focus on Strengthening Government Oversight at FDA, USDA, Making Recalls Mandatory
BODY: YONKERS, N.Y., Dec. 7 [AScribe Newswire] -- Providing consumers with timely information about food safety risks and giving them the tools to take action to effect change is the goal of www.NotInMyFood.org , a project and accompanying website launched today by Consumers Union, nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports.
"To an alarming degree, the federal agencies that are supposed to be our watchdogs bow to the pressures of the food industry, even when the end results clearly endanger public health," said Reggie James, director of www.NotInMyFood.org .
In light of a mad cow scare in November - in which an animal tested positive for infection twice before being cleared in a third test - and the confirmed case earlier last December in the state of Washington, James said it is urgent for the Food and Drug Administration to act to keep the disease agent out of animal feed and for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to test more cows annually.
As part of the new campaign, Consumer Reports is making an investigative report titled "You are what they eat," available in the free portion of its web site. The report raises concerns that the federal government isn't doing enough to protect the feed supply in the U.S. According to the article, regulatory loopholes are leaving consumers vulnerable to pathogens, drugs and contaminants consumed by the animals they eat.
Consumers Union is proposing a 4-point action plan to make beef safer for American consumers:
- Provide USDA and the FDA with the power to order mandatory recalls of contaminated food products, rather than voluntary recalls.
- End secrecy agreements between USDA and individual states that keep the public in the dark about recalled beef.
- Promptly enact rules prohibiting materials that may transmit mad cow disease.
- Increase the number of cows tested annually by USDA for mad cow disease. Neither the USDA nor the FDA have the power to order mandatory recalls of contaminated food products other than infant formula, leaving it up to food producers instead to conduct voluntary recalls.
"While government agencies have the authority to recall faulty products ranging from toys to tires and impose penalties if products aren't pulled off the market, when it comes to our food supply, industry calls the shots," James said.
Consumers are also kept in the dark about food-borne health risks. Federal regulators refuse to tell state officials about the locations of stores and restaurants that have received potentially contaminated products unless they agree to keep that information secret from the public. Currently, 12 states are reported to have signed such secrecy agreements.
In the wake of the discovery of the first mad cow case in the U.S., the FDA promised in January to make changes in its animal feed rules. But FDA never followed through. FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan initially announced that the agency would ban cow blood and several other materials that pose risks in terms of transmission of mad cow disease in cattle feed. However, the agency never published the regulations in the Federal Register. In July, the FDA said it was considering broader restrictions, thereby postponing any action even further.
"FDA must immediately close loopholes in its rules on animal feed that could allow the disease to spread," said Michael Hansen, Ph.D., a research biologist at Consumers Union and advisor to the www.NotinMyFood.org project. "The agency has known for a while that cow blood and chicken coop floor waste could be vehicles for transmission of mad cow disease. It should act immediately to prohibit these substances as well as restaurant waste and pig and poultry slaughterhouse waste, in ruminant feed."
USDA, Hansen noted, is testing less than 1 percent of the cows slaughtered each year, far less than the percentage tested in Japan and most of Europe. The USDA has tested 113,000 cows since it began a broader test program earlier this year, but more than 35 million cattle are slaughtered for food in the U.S. annually.
Hansen said that while the risk of buying infected meat may be low for any given piece of steak, consumers who want to minimize their risk can:
- buy organic beef, which is not fed any of the animal byproducts that can carry the infectious prions, and
- stay away from organ meats -- especially brains - as well as beef sausage, hot dogs, and pre-packaged hamburgers, which may combine meat from many cows.
"While testing alone will not fully protect the public, we should be testing all animals over 20 months," said Hansen. "Even animals that test negative can be silent carriers of this infection."
- - - -
CONTACTS: Michael Hansen, 914-378-2452
Rafael Ayuso, Consumers Union Media Relations, 512-477-4431, ext. 114
ON THE WEB: www.NotInMyFood.org
ABOUT CONSUMERS UNION
Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, is an independent nonprofit testing, educational and information organization serving only the consumer. We are a comprehensive source of unbiased advice about products and services, personal finance, health, nutrition and other consumer concerns. Since 1936, our mission has been to test products, inform the public and protect consumers. CONTACT: Michael Hansen, 914-378-2452; Rafael Ayuso, 512-477-4431, ext. 114
LOAD-DATE: December 8, 2004
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Copyright 2004 Comtex News Network, Inc. All Rights Reserved Copyright 2004 Resource News International
Resource News International
This content is provided to LexisNexis by Comtex News Network, Inc.
December 13, 2004 Monday
LENGTH: 328 words
HEADLINE: New Rules Would Ban BSE From Canadian Pet Food, Fertilizer
BYLINE: Resource News International
DATELINE: WINNIPEG, MB
BODY:
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has proposed amendments to federal regulations that will strengthen existing animal feed controls. The amendments are intended to further protect Canadian cattle from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)or mad cow disease, a release from the CFIA said.
The proposed amendments would prohibit the use of specified risk material (SRM) in animal feeds, including pet food, the release said. SRM are cattle tissues that may contain the agent that causes BSE. The Government of Canada already requires the removal of SRM from the human food supply, which is the most effective measure that can be taken to protect public health from BSE.
As a precautionary measure, the Government implemented a feed ban in 1997 prohibiting the feeding of ruminant animals with most mammalian proteins. Preventing SRM from entering the feed production chain enhances the existing feed ban by diminishing the effects of potential cross-contamination of animal feeds that could occur as feed is produced and distributed, as well as any inappropriate on-farm use.
The amendments also prohibit the use of SRM in fertilizers, the release said. This provision is intended to prevent the potential accidental or intentional misuse of fertilizers as feed. As well, it addresses the possibility that contaminated grazing pastures could spread BSE, although the current science surrounding the environmental behaviour of the disease is incomplete.
The proposed regulations have been placed in the Canada Gazette Part 1. A 75-day comment period ending February 24, 2005 is being provided to give regulated industries, trading partners and other interested parties the opportunity to review the proposed amendments and provide the CFIA with written comments, the release said.
This comment period builds on extensive consultations undertaken during the development of the amendments, the CFIA said. END
LOAD-DATE: December 14, 2004
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Copyright 2004 Associated Press All Rights Reserved
The Associated Press State & Local Wire
These materials may not be republished without the express written consent of The Associated Press
December 15, 2004, Wednesday, BC cycle
SECTION: State and Regional
LENGTH: 590 words
HEADLINE: Cantwell says mad cow feed loopholes still aren't closed
BYLINE: By DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: SEATTLE
BODY: A year after the first U.S. case of mad cow disease was reported, Sen. Maria Cantwell says the Food and Drug Administration still has not fulfilled its promise to tighten animal feed rules to help prevent future cases.
"The beef industry and other federal agencies have worked overtime to restore confidence in the world's safest beef supply, but the FDA has failed to act on its promise to close loopholes in the mad cow feed ban," Cantwell, D-Wash., said in a news release Tuesday.
Last January, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced new FDA proposals to close loopholes that allow cattle to be fed such things as cow blood, restaurant scraps and chicken litter. The rules, which have not been finalized or implemented, would also ban feed production facilities from using the same equipment to process feed for ruminants like cattle and for other animals. That practice can lead to cross-contamination of feed, Cantwell said.
Cantwell wants the FDA to implement the new rules because she believes they would help reduce the risk of exposing cattle to the proteins that cause mad cow, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.
But the FDA has changed directions in its mad cow regulation discussions since January, Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine, told The Associated Press.
In February, an international review team made recommendations on how the United States should change its regulations to reduce the risk of mad cow disease. Sundlof said those recommendations did not include any of the new rules proposed in January. Instead, they focused on keeping high-risk cattle parts - brains, spinal cord and other nerve tissue - out of all animal feed.
High-risk cattle parts have been prohibited in cattle feed since 1997, but that doesn't prevent ranchers from feeding other animal feed to their cattle and potentially putting them at risk for mad cow.
Sundlof said his department thinks prohibiting high-risk cattle parts from all animal feed would have a greater effect than the January proposals, although those proposals could be implemented eventually.
The changes recommended by the international panel were open to public comment until August and now FDA officials are working on the wording of the proposed policy change. Sundlof said he could not estimate how long it would take for the final rule to be approved and implemented.
"Right now we don't have a firm timeline," he said. "We are working as hard as we can to write these regulations."
About 50 countries initially banned U.S. beef after the discovery of a single case of mad cow disease in a Holstein at a Mabton dairy farm in December 2003. The Mabton cow, which had been raised on a farm in Alberta, Canada, had been fed feed containing meat and bone meal as a calf. Many countries continue to ban U.S. beef.
Scientists believe people who eat beef from infected cows can contract variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a fatal brain-wasting disease that has been detected in about 150 people worldwide. No human cases have been traced to U.S. beef.
In a letter to Thompson dated Tuesday, Cantwell encouraged the FDA to "move beyond your 'tentative' conclusions and implement a comprehensive animal feed ban in weeks rather than years."
In addition to urging the FDA to enact the new rules, Cantwell last February introduced a bill that would ban "specified risk materials," including bovine spinal and brain tissue, from all animal feed, including pet food.
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December 23, 2004, Thursday
SECTION: WASHINGTON DATELINE
LENGTH: 1005 words
HEADLINE: Some mad cow regulations still corralled a year later
SOURCE: Tacoma News Tribune
BYLINE: LES BLUMENTHAL
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY: In the weeks following the discovery of the first-ever U.S. case of mad cow disease at a Central Washington dairy farm, federal officials unveiled a string of new regulations designed to reassure the public the nation's meat supply was safe.
A year later, some of those rules have been adopted, while others remain in bureaucratic limbo.
Even as Americans chow down on record amounts of beef, consumer groups and some on Capitol Hill criticize the Bush administration for moving too slowly. And a union representing federal inspectors said earlier this week that slaughterhouses are violating tough prohibitions banning certain high-risk materials from entering the food chain.
"The administration should do all it can to ensure that our nation's food supply is safe," U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said in a letter to Tommy Thompson, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. "My constituents' expectations that the administration would take swift regulatory actions have gone unfulfilled."
The administration and the beef industry say consumers have nothing to worry about. They insist "firewalls" installed to prevent the spread of mad cow, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy have worked. They point out that no additional cases were found in more than 153,000 animals tested since June - seven times more than were tested in 2003.
"The U.S. Department of Agriculture remains confident in the safety of the U.S. beef supply," Andrea Morgan, associate deputy director of the department's Animal Health and Inspection Service, told reporters last month.
Last year, two days before Christmas, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman announced that a Holstein infected with mad cow had been found at a farm near Mabton, Yakima County, Wash. As Veneman made the announcement, federal officials scrambled to activate the BSE "red book," a detailed emergency plan to deal with a mad cow outbreak.
A response team that included experts in veterinary medicine, food safety, public health, epidemiology, pathology, international trade and public affairs was activated. Dozens of federal investigators descended on the Yakima Valley and a slaughterhouse in Moses Lake, where the diseased animal had been slaughtered.
Within days, the infected animal was traced back to a Canadian herd. More than 10,000 pounds of meat from the animal and others slaughtered at the same time was voluntarily recalled after being tracked to eight states. And more than 700 cattle in Washington, Oregon and Idaho were killed as a precaution.
At the same, cattle prices dropped as more than 60 countries, from Vietnam to Kenya, banned imports of U.S. beef.
A week after the mad cow case was confirmed, Veneman announced rules banning "downer" animals - those that can't walk or show signs of a central nervous system disorder like BSE - from the food chain.
Veneman also moved to tighten rules at slaughterhouses involving "specific risk materials" such as the brain and spinal cord, where BSE is thought to concentrate. She also promised to implement a national animal identification system to track cattle as they move from herds to feed lots to slaughter.
In January, Thompson announced that the Food and Drug Administration would tighten the rules covering cattle feed. Prior to a 1997 ban, the feed contained parts of cattle that were added as protein. The fear was that BSE was spread through the feed when parts of an infected animal were added.
The new FDA regulations were designed to close loopholes that allowed cow blood, restaurant scraps and poultry litter to be added to cattle feed.
Following the recommendations of an international panel of experts, Veneman announced a vastly expanded testing program for cattle using so-called rapid tests that had been prohibited before.
Despite three false alarms, no new cases of mad cow disease have been found.
Federal and industry officials, however, continue to say they would not be surprised if additional BSE-infected cattle are found.
Consumer groups say that while the Department of Agriculture has generally followed through on its new regulations, the FDA has yet to act to tighten the feed ban regulations.
"They made some changes on the meat side and the slaughterhouse side, but we are not sure how effective they will be," said Patty Lovera of consumer group Public Citizen. "But the glaring area that hasn't been addressed is feed rules, and that is unacceptable."
FDA spokeswoman Rae Jones said public comment is still being accepted on the feed rules, but added that the international scientific panel did not recommend such changes.
Industry officials say they don't think the new rules are needed.
"There is no scientific basis for additional regulation," said Terry Stokes, the chief executive of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.
Lovera also criticized the administration's failure to implement a national animal identification program, though administration officials say they are working on several pilot programs.
Since BSE was first discovered in Britain in the 1990s, more than 180,000 cases have been reported in roughly two dozen countries. Humans can get a form of the disease, variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, from eating infected meat. The human form of the disease is always fatal, and more than 150 people have died from it, most of them British.
Through all of this, Americans continue to eat beef. Domestic beef sales in 2004 are estimated at a record $70 billion, an increase of $8 billion - or 13 percent - over the previous year.
"Consumers have a high degree of confidence their meat is safe," Stokes said.
Cattle prices have also rebounded, even though many countries, including Japan, America's biggest beef customer, continue to ban U.S. imports. Prior to the discovery of the BSE-infected cow, Japan had been importing about $1.2 billion worth of U.S. beef a year, about one-third of all U.S. beef sold overseas.
(Distributed by Scripps-McClatchy Western Service, http://www.shns.com.)
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The Associated Press State & Local Wire
These materials may not be republished without the express written consent of The Associated Press
December 22, 2004, Wednesday, BC cycle
SECTION: State and Regional
LENGTH: 1043 words
HEADLINE: Mad cow case focused public attention on food safety
BYLINE: By ROXANA HEGEMAN, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: WICHITA, Kan.
BODY: After the nation's first case of mad cow disease was discovered, government regulators and industry officials worked quickly to reassure consumers it was safe to eat a steak. A year later, you'd never guess there was any concern at all - the nation's appetite for beef has remained strong.
But consumer advocates say there's a problem with that lack of reaction from the public - it might have diminished the impact of the mad cow case on improving food safety. Aside from several steps taken shortly after a single cow in Washington state was found infected with the disease, reforms that were promised remain unfulfilled.
Federal regulators, trying to reassure U.S. consumers, promised to strengthen the country's food safety rules. For the most part, it didn't happen, said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety for the Center of Science in the Public Interest.
"Consumers didn't react very much, so they don't feel the need to take action, and I think that is unfortunate," Smith DeWaal said.
Certainly, significant changes were made to strengthen existing safeguards already in place.
Some consumer groups say the most important was the banning of so-called downer cattle - animals too sick to stand - from slaughter for human consumption. Regulators at the U.S. Department of Agriculture believe new rules that forbid potentially infectious material, such as spinal cords, from being incorporated into food are the most significant reform.
The government's testing program for mad cow - formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE - was expanded to include more than 221,000 animals, 10 times the number tested in 2003, by the time it is done. The surveillance program went into effect June 1 and is to be completed in a year to 18 months. As of Monday, the agency had tested 152,984 animals.
But animal feed rules designed to prevent future cases of mad cow have not been strengthened. And a national animal identification system designed to track individual cattle - in the works before the BSE discovery, but supposedly expedited after its discovery - has yet to be fully implemented.
Other proposed changes, food safety advocates said, were made not to benefit U.S. consumers, but rather those overseas, whose countries quickly closed their borders to American beef imports after the mad cow discovery.
For example, Smith DeWaal said, during recent trade talks with Japan, U.S. negotiators seemed willing to apply stricter regulations to cattle 20 months or older that would be marketed to Japanese consumers. The regulations would start at 30 months for cattle aimed at the domestic market.
"The pressure put on USDA by foreign governments is far more effective in effecting change than the pressure put on USDA by U.S. consumers," Smith DeWaal said. "They are much more worried about losing markets."
Agriculture Department officials discount that criticism.
"It is our goal to make sure that we are providing a safe and wholesome product to consumers - whether it is in America or elsewhere globally," said Beth Johnson, a specialist assistant to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman.
Johnson said the continuing strong demand for beef is due to the confidence consumers have in the U.S. beef supply and the steps the agency has taken to protect the U.S. cattle herd. She credited safeguards - such as a ban on high-risk cattle parts in cattle feed since 1997 - the agency put in place years before the first mad cow case.
Such safeguards have kept the United States from having widespread incidents of mad cow disease such as those in other nations, she said.
Johnson acknowledged it may be early 2006 before a national animal identification system that can trace an animal back to its source in 48 hours is fully in place. But the agency said it has made headway in putting the system together, and it can now track the majority of cattle under existing state and industry systems.
Through it all, no deaths or illnesses have been attributed to the sole confirmed U.S. mad cow case; other diseases such as E. coli or listeria are far more common. Food-borne diseases account for 5,000 deaths, 75 million cases of illness and 325,000 hospitalizations annually in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.
"Mad cow disease has had a greater visibility than a number of other meat-related diseases," said Greg Watchman, executive director of the Government Accountability Project, a government watchdog group. "In the end, it serves to underscore the systematic problems at USDA in dealing with these diseases as a whole."
That problem, he said, is the conflicting missions of the Agriculture Department: protect the nation's food supply while also promoting the nation's agriculture industry.
"We remain concerned USDA continues to suffer from 'agency capture' - meaning that it too often does the bidding of large (meat) packers rather than advancing the mission of protecting America's families," Watchman said. "Obviously, the bottom line here is America's families remain at risk of food-borne illnesses such as mad cow."
As an example, he cited the Agriculture Department's refusal to allow Creekstone Farms Premium Beef to test all cattle processed at its Arkansas City, Kan., slaughterhouse for mad cow. Such testing was opposed by major meatpackers, who contend it costs too much and is scientifically unnecessary.
"When a small packer offers to test every animal for mad cow - and USDA refuses to allow that practice - something is wrong with the government's fulfillment of its mission to protect our U.S. food supply," Watchman said.
Again, it's an argument rejected by the Agriculture Department. Johnson said the department's decision on Creekstone was based strictly on science. The cattle slaughtered by Creekstone are too young to test reliably, she said.
"The last thing in the world we want to do is promote information and promote assurances on something that scientifically we know is not effective when you are talking about young animals," Johnson said.
---
On the Net:
U.S. Department of Agriculture: www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usdahome
Center of Science in the Public Interest: www.cspinet.org
GRAPHIC: AP Photo NY811; AP Graphic BSE TESTING
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Copyright 2004 U.P.I. All Rights Reserved
UPI
December 30, 2004 Thursday 7:55 PM EST
LENGTH: 889 words
HEADLINE: Analysis: U.S. awaits Asia cattle response
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES, Dec. 30
BODY:
The United States' decision this week to allow limited resumption of cattle imports from Canada could have a greater potential payoff if it convinces Asian nations will follow suit by lifting their current bans on American beef.
Agricultural analysts said Thursday the plan to allow at least some Canadian cattle and beef to once again be sold into the United States would help get the long-time relationship between U.S. slaughterhouses and Canadian ranchers back on track. Large volumes of Canadian beef are packaged in the United States where it is either consumed or shipped abroad.
At the same time, it is hoped that the move would convince Japan and South Korea that the North American beef supply was as well protected as possible against bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the dreaded mad cow disease, and re-open the markets that have been closed to U.S. beef exports for the past year.
"It could influence those countries' decisions regarding future resumption of beef imports from the United States, but we have little basis for assessing whether the influence will be positive or negative," the U.S. Department of Agriculture conceded in an analysis of the effects of the import resumptions that will take effect March 7.
Under the U.S. proposal unveiled Wednesday, Canadian ranchers will be allowed to sell live cattle younger than 30 months into the United States where processing plants have for decades depended on their northern neighbors to augment the domestic supply of cattle for a meat-hungry nation.
The price of cattle is naturally expected to drop in the United States in the months immediately after the cross-border shipment ban is repealed, although only by single-digit percentages at the wholesale level, which will translate, maybe, to slightly lower hamburger prices at the supermarket.
The benefits should be more pronounced in Canada, which saw the $4 billion worth of beef and cattle exports in 2002 stumble to less than $1.9 billion this year; virtually all of Canada's cattle exports wind up in the United States.
"Canada's cattle producers are delighted," said Stan Eby, president of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association said Wednesday. "This announcement will put confidence into the live cattle market in Canada. Getting slaughter cattle back moving to the United States will help relieve the bottleneck at the packing plants that has been the main reason for depressed cattle prices in Canada."
The U.S. beef processing industry was also pleased with the move that it touted publicly as proof positive that the mad cow issue had been aggressively tackled.
There were also calls from some quarters of the industry that restrictions on Canadian beef should be lifted altogether.
"Calling Canadian beef unsafe is like calling your twin sister ugly," said Mark Dopp, vice president and general counsel of the American Meat Institute, which coincidentally filed a lawsuit in Washington Thursday seeking to end the ban completely on the grounds there was no scientific evidence that cross-border mad cow disease posed a threat to the United States.
"The United States and Canada both have implemented state-of-the-art, meat inspection and animal disease prevention systems," Dopp told reporters Thursday. "As we look across the borders, we see near mirror images of one another."
Dopp voiced concerns that continuing the ban would result in Canadian packers increasing their capacity while U.S. slaughterhouses withered away and forced border-area ranchers to ship their cattle hundreds of miles for slaughter.
The economics of the U.S.-Canadian beef trade, however, are not solely a North American affair. Exports continue to be a pivotal issue and the ultimate priority for interests on both sides of the border will be to re-open the overseas markets that are currently closed to them.
Classic commodities economics holds that the more export opportunities that are available, the more likely domestic market prices will remain high, which would be good news for both U.S. meat packers and Canadian ranchers.
The industry's thrust this week has been that American and Canadian neighbors are in this together, and that by declaring the risk of mad cow from Canadian cattle to be low, the United States is signaling to the rest of the world that BSE is no longer a major threat.
"On the other hand," the agency said, "the rule may be viewed by other countries as increasing BSE risks in the United States and therefore may prolong market closures, even though there would be no scientific basis for it."
The situation wasn't helped on Thursday when the Canadian government reported that it had found a dairy cow possibly stricken with BSE in Alberta. The animal was too old to have been allowed into the U.S. processing chain, and the Agriculture Department said it would not delay the March re-opening of the border.
"Because of the mitigation measures that Canada has in place, we continue to believe the risk is minimal," stated Dr. Ron DeHaven, head of the Agriculture Department's Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service.
The next, and possibly biggest step for both the Americans and Canadians will be to convince leery governments in Asia -- where the beef will ultimately be consumed -- that the risk of mad cow disease from North America is indeed minimal.
(Please send comments to nationaldesk@upi.com)
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The Associated Press State & Local Wire
These materials may not be republished without the express written consent of The Associated Press
January 3, 2005, Monday, BC cycle
10:12 AM Eastern Time
SECTION: State and Regional
LENGTH: 1118 words
HEADLINE: Canada confirms second mad cow case
BYLINE: By ROB GILLIES, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: TORONTO
BODY: Canada confirmed its second case of mad cow disease Sunday, just days after the United States announced plans to reopen the border to Canadian beef, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture suggested it would not change its stance.
The dairy cow from the province of Alberta, which was born in 1996, tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, as mad cow disease is formally known, according to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The results confirmed preliminary tests released earlier this week.
U.S. imports of Canadian beef and cattle were halted 19 months ago when a cow in northern Alberta was discovered with mad cow disease, which attacks the animals' nervous system. Concerns persisted after a Canadian-born cow in Washington state was found in December 2003 to have the disease.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday that the border could be opened to Canadian beef in March. Despite learning of the new suspected case, the Bush administration said the next day that it would stand by its decision to renew Canadian cattle imports, expressing confidence that public health measures in both countries will protect U.S. livestock and consumers.
Food contaminated with BSE can afflict people with usually fatal variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Agriculture officials reiterated support for lifting the ban on Sunday.
"I don't anticipate that this confirmation will change implementation of our rule," department spokeswoman Alisa Harrison said Sunday. "I think it's pretty much where we were last week. We've been working closely with Canadian officials."
Harrison said U.S. officials had considered the possibility of additional confirmed mad cow cases in Canada and their action was "based on guidelines set by the World Health Organization." She said the rule is to be formalized on Tuesday.
Under the WHO guidelines, Harrison said, a country with a cattle population of 5.5 million head over 24 months of age like Canada could have 11 cases of mad cow during a consecutive 12-month period and still be considered a minimal risk country.
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said he was greatly concerned by this latest development.
"I call on the Bush Administration to be more clear as to why they think Canada is at minimal risk and provide additional information to the American public - most importantly to Montana cattle producers - that shows, without a doubt, that Canada's cattle and inspection system are safe.
In a statement Sunday night, Baucus said he isn't convinced the USDA has done that. "We must proceed with utmost caution, using only sound science and common sense."
He said he planned to immediately ask for a meeting with USDA-Secretary Designate Mike Johanns, noting he's the senior member of the Senate's Agriculture Committee, which must confirm his nomination. "I will hold Governor Johanns to the high standards Montanans expect and will have a frank conversation with him about how critically important it is for any decision to be made using sound science."
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said the infected cow did not enter the human food or animal feed supply and posed no risk to the public.
Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin spoke to President Bush on Friday about the new suspected case. Martin sought assurances that it would not mean a re-closure of the U.S. border to Canadian beef imports, and Bush assured him that his administration was committed to keeping the border open, a Canadian official said on condition of anonymity.
Authorities said the cow was born in Alberta in 1996, prior to the introduction of the 1997 feed ban. It is suspected that the animal became infected by contaminated feed before the ban.
BSE is a chronic, degenerative disorder affecting the central nervous system of cattle. Since it was first diagnosed in Britain in 1986, there have been more than 180,000 cases.
Before the trade ban, animals regularly crossed the border and Canada sold more than 70 percent of its live cattle to the United States. That market was worth $1.5 billion in 2002.
The decision to allow Canadian cows into the United States in light of the latest scare brought sharp responses from several Democratic lawmakers last week.
Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., called the decision "outrageous" and accused the Agriculture Department leadership of caring "more about the interests of mega feed lots and processors than the interests of farmers, ranchers and consumers."
Ron DeHaven, administrator of the agriculture department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, has said beef brought into the United State will be subject to Canadian inspection and subject to re-inspection by the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service.
The USDA ruling, effective March 7, declared Canada a "minimal-risk region" so that cattle could be shipped into the United States under certain restrictions. The cattle must be slaughtered by the age of 30 months, which scientists say is too young to contract mad cow disease, and they must be transported in sealed containers to a feedlot or slaughter house. The discovery in Washington state a year ago is the only confirmed case of mad cow disease in the United States. There have been a handful of suspected mad cow cases during preliminary screening in the United States, but more sophisticated tests produced negative results for the disease.
Both the beef industry and the USDA acknowledge that eventually another mad cow case is likely to be discovered among the 40 million adult cattle in the United States. About 1 percent of the herd, or 446,000 cattle, are considered in the targeted "high risk" category, according to the USDA, because they are not ambulatory and do not show signs of other ailments.
Stan Eby, the President of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, expressed confidence that the U.S. administrtion wouldn't change its mind.
"They made a very strong comment regarding this last week. We feel quite confident that the U.S. will follow through on their planned schedule," he said.
Darcy Davis, chair of Alberta Beef Producers, said Sunday the new case should not cause too much concern among Canadian beef producers.
"It's an ongoing concern with BSE, but at the same time we have the safeguards in place and we're handling it scientifically now and we know that we have an extremely low incidence," Davis said.
While investigators have identified the latest infected animal's farm of origin, they were shifting their efforts Sunday to identify any other animals of similar risk - specifically, recently born offspring of the infected animal and cattle born on the same farm within a year of the infected animal.
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Cow-Calf Weekly Mailbag November 5, 2004 Reader Questions Poultry Litter And "Downer" Bans
I'm confused about the effective date of USDA Secretary Ann Veneman's ban on feeding poultry litter to cattle, and the banned slaughter of downer cattle. Larry W. Mohney Frohna, MO
Editor's Note: On Jan. 26, 2004, responding to the BSE case in December 2003, FDA (not USDA) announced it would publish two interim final rules that would take effect "immediately upon publication," and after providing opportunity for public comment after publication.
The first interim final rule included banning any material from "downer" cattle from FDA-regulated human food (including dietary supplements) and cosmetics. Included in the second rule was a ban on the use of poultry litter as a feed ingredient for ruminant animals. This FDA rule, which took effect in mid July, bars the use of many specified risk materials (SRMs) along with meat from downers and dead animals in human food, dietary supplements and cosmetics.
On Feb. 4, 2004, an International Review Team (IRT) convened by USDA issued a report recommending additional actions to protect the public against BSE. Included were more stringent measures banning all mammalian and poultry proteins from cattle feed, and the removal of SRMs from all animal feed, including pet food.
But, FDA delayed any action on the Jan. 26 proposed rules and the additional rules that would tighten its regulations on cattle feed. FDA says the feed ban regulations might not take effect until 2005 or 2006.
Here's an example of how complicated these rules have become: FDA unveiled a proposal that food makers who use any beef ingredients be required to keep records for at least two years showing they've not used any SRMs. Importers would also have to keep records of what cattle parts went into their products. The recordkeeping plan could take more than a year to implement.
The feed ban delay is a result of FDA officials not considering some consequences when they announced the rule changes on Jan. 26. The delay could add to our problems reopening beef exports, but FDA wants to ensure it gets the right rules in place. Obviously, the world is watching the U.S. response to its first case of BSE.
The feed ban rules are particularly sticky because of their impact on so many sectors of the livestock and poultry industries -- livestock feeders, feed manufacturers and dealers, transportation and storage entities, beef processors, renderers, poultry producers and pet food manufacturers.
What's this mean for beef and dairy producers? Simply, poultry litter can be legally be fed to cattle until the final interim feed ban rule is published. Likewise, milk replacers and colostrum substitutes containing ruminant blood products can also fed to calves. However, producers need to be aware there likely will be no grace period to feed out existing stocks of these products once the rule is published.
Right now, cattle fed poultry litter, milk replacers or colostrum substitutes prior to the ban can still move in normal marketing methods. After publication of the rule, however, cattle that consume banned feedstuffs won't be able to enter the human food chain.
* Clint Peck *
http://www.prwatch.org/node/3124
Feeding Cows to Cows, One Year Later John Stauber
An alarming, but not surprising, investigation in the December 16, 2004,
Vancouver Sun
The paper reports that "secret tests on cattle feed conducted by a federal
agency earlier this year found more than half contained animal parts not
listed in the ingredients, according to internal documents obtained by the
Vancouver Sun. The test results raise questions about whether rules banning
the feeding of cattle remains to other cattle -- the primary way in which
mad cow disease is spread -- are being routinely violated. ... Controlled
experiments have shown an animal needs to consume as little as one milligram
-- about the size of a grain of sand -- of material contaminated with bovine
spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) to develop the brain-wasting disease."
Sheldon Rampton and I reported in our 1997 book Mad Cow USA
One week from today, December 23rd, is the first anniversary of the
announcement of the US mad cow. Since then the few steps taken by the US
government have been completely inadequate, even though the USDA's own
expert panel concluded last February that mad cow disease has been spreading
and amplifying in US feed for many years.
The weaning of calves on cattle blood remains legal and widespread. Cattle
blood and fat are fed legally to cattle. Cattle are legally fed to pigs and
chickens which are in turn legally fed back to cattle. The USDA will sue any
company privately testing for mad cow disease. The USDA's own testing
program is inadequate and has no transparency. The recent announcement that
a suspect cow was eventually found negative has not been confirmed or
verified outside of the USDA and therefore should not be trusted.
One year after the US mad cow, the crisis continues while industry and
government attempt to sweep it under the rug.
-------
John Stauber founded the Center for Media and Democracy
Cattle feed rife with animal parts
Primary way of spreading mad cow disease, which crippled Canada's
industry after being found in one Alberta animal in May 2003
Chad Skelton
Vancouver Sun; CanWest News Service
December 16, 2004
VANCOUVER - Secret tests on cattle feed conducted by a federal agency
earlier this year found more than half contained animal parts not listed in
the ingredients, according to internal documents obtained by the Vancouver
Sun.
The test results raise questions about whether rules banning the
feeding of cattle remains to other cattle -- the primary way in which mad
cow disease is spread -- are being routinely violated.
According to internal Canadian Food Inspection Agency documents --
obtained through the Access to Information Act -- 70 feed samples labelled
as vegetable-only were tested by the agency between January and March of
this year. Of those, 41 (59 per cent) were found to contain "undeclared
animal materials."
"The presence of animal protein materials (in vegetable feeds) may
indicate ... deliberate or accidental inclusion of animal proteins in feeds
where they are not supposed to be," said an internal memo to the president
of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that described the test results as
"worrisome."
The memo, written in April by Sergio Tolusso, feed program
co-ordinator for the CFIA, said the contamination could also have been
caused inadvertently -- for example, through the transporting of different
feeds in the same trucks.
Controlled experiments have shown an animal needs to consume as little
as one milligram -- about the size of a grain of sand -- of material
contaminated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) to develop the
brain-wasting disease.
Michael Hansen, an expert on mad-cow disease with the U.S.-based
Consumers Union, the independent research institute that publishes Consumer
Reports, said the CFIA tests are troubling.
"The fact that stuff that is labelled as vegetable feed, that 59 per
cent of it has animal material, that's incredibly high," said Hansen, who
has a PhD in biology. "This should be a wake-up call to CFIA. It doesn't
look good."
Michael McBane, national co-ordinator for the Canadian Health
Coalition, a watchdog group, said the tests suggest the feed ban is not
being adequately enforced.
"It demonstrates the fact that the (feed) ban is basically
meaningless," McBane said. "It's pretty well recognized that we have mad cow
disease in Canada because of contaminated feed. It's the frontlines in the
battle to stop the spread."
Eating beef from cows infected with BSE has been linked to the
development in humans of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), a deadly
brain-wasting illness.
In the 1990s, the United Kingdom contended with an outbreak of BSE and
more than 100 people died of vCJD.
In 1997, as a precaution, Canada implemented a ban on feeding
ruminants -- such as sheep and cattle -- to other ruminants. However,
ruminant remains can still be fed to chicken and pigs, and chicken and pig
remains can be fed to cattle.
With the discovery of a single Alberta cow with BSE in May 2003, the
feed ban took on added importance.
The U.S. border was closed to all Canadian beef for several months and
remains closed to live cattle. The import ban has cost the Canadian industry
an estimated $4 billion.
"Compliance with the existing ban is a critical factor in preventing
the disease from spreading to other animals," Tolusso wrote in January in an
internal memo to CFIA president Dick Fadden. "Major non-compliance with the
feed ban cannot be tolerated, and measures to address the risks of domestic
ruminants being exposed to prohibited animal proteins must be initiated
promptly."
According to the documents, concerns about the integrity of Canada's
feed were first raised in the summer of 2003, when American authorities
turned back seven separate shipments of vegetable feed from Canada because
they were contaminated with animal parts.
"The animal proteins detected in these (shipments) were not supposed
to be in the feeds," Tolusso explained to Fadden in an August 2003 memo.
"While the results initially appear to be very worrying, it is difficult to
interpret the real significance of these findings."
To determine if there was a wider problem with Canadian feed, the CFIA
initiated a nationwide testing program of imported feed in early 2004.
To make the job easier for its scientists, the agency collected only
samples labelled as vegetable-only, such as soy meal or grain -- feed that
shouldn't contain any animal parts.
The samples were tested in Ottawa by CFIA scientists. They looked at a
few grams of each sample under a microscope.
The worst results were for feed manufactured in Canada. Of the 28
domestic feed samples tested by the agency, 20 had undeclared animal protein
in them -- 71 per cent of the samples. Just under half of the imported
samples -- 19 of 39 -- contained animal parts. (Three of the 70 samples were
of undetermined origin.)
In an interview, Tolusso said he couldn't say how many of the
contaminated feed samples contained cattle remains.
"In the absence of real identifiable material, like feathers and
hairs, (scientists are) left looking at bone fragments and pieces of muscle
tissue, and those are virtually impossible to determine what species they
might come from," Tolusso said.
As a result, he said, the agency doesn't have a clear idea of how
often cattle remains are fed to other cattle.
In addition to concerns over testing, the CFIA documents reveal
problems among the 550 commercial feed mills in Canada.
According to a memo to Fadden last March, an initial inspection last
year of several hundred mills found 21 per cent were not complying with
federal regulations.
Most violations were minor and quickly corrected. The report notes
seven mills had "major non-compliance issues" involving things such as
proper labelling and record-keeping.
Three mills were failing "to prevent the contamination of ruminant
feeds with non-ruminant feeds containing ruminant meat and bone meal" -- the
type of contamination that can spread BSE.
Two of those mills successfully recalled their contaminated product,
but the report notes that in one case some feed was sent out and consumed by
cattle.
Tolusso said the CFIA's feed tests led to followup inspections in feed
mills, but no further recalls of feed.
Some experts have argued Canada should keep cattle remains out of feed
altogether, as is done in Europe.
"What they need to do is cut out the loopholes (and) stop feeding
mammalian protein to food animals," Hansen said.
McBane agreed. "At the end of the day, the only way to stop the
transmission of BSE is a complete stop on recycling animal protein," he
said.
Tolusso said the CFIA believes a ban on just the riskiest materials --
such as cow brains -- will eliminate most of the risk of BSE spreading in
Canada.
But he said the agency hasn't ruled out a total ban on cattle remains
in feed.
"At this point, we've put our best guess forward (on) the most
appropriate approach," he said. "But that doesn't preclude that ... we might
have to go to a more strict ban."