FDA Partially Tightens Up Feed Rules to Stop Spread of Mad Cow

New York Times
January 27, 2004

Rules Issued on Animal Feed and Use of Disabled Cattle
By DENISE GRADY and DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

The Food and Drug Administration imposed new rules yesterday to prevent the
spread of mad cow disease, including a ban on feeding cow blood and chicken
wastes to cattle. The agency also banned using dead or disabled cows to make
products for people like dietary supplements, cosmetics or soups and other
foods with traces of meat.

The rules, described by Mark B. McClellan, commissioner of food and drugs,
in a telephone news briefing, take effect in a few days, as soon as they are
published in The Federal Register, a spokesman for the agency said. The
quick start of the rules after their announcement is a departure from the
usual slower process.

Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of the Health and Human Services
Department, the parent of the food and drug agency, called the rules "a
giant step forward" but said in a telephone interview that even stricter
regulations on animal feed might be imposed in the future.

The rules are meant to prevent human exposure to the agent that causes mad
cow disease and mirror the steps that the Agriculture Department took last
month to protect meat supplies. The two sets of changes are a reaction to
the discovery last month that a cow in Washington State had the brain
disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

Officials theorize that the cow was infected by contaminated feed in Canada,
where it was born.

Contaminated feed is widely believed to have started the mad cow epidemic in
animals in Britain in the 1980's. Scientists suspect that feed can transmit
the disease if it includes bone meal or other material rendered from the
carcasses of sick cows, particularly the brain and spinal cord. The United
States banned the use of cow parts in cattle feed in the 1990's but let
producers feed cow blood to calves as a milk substitute.

Blood can no longer be used, because studies have suggested that it may also
be infectious.

Also banned is the use of composted "poultry litter" as a feed ingredient
for cows. The litter consists of bedding, spilled feed, feathers and fecal
matter swept from the floors of chicken coops. The ingredient that worries
health officials is the spilled feed, because chicken feed can legally
contain meat and bone meal rendered from beef.

Animals can no longer be fed "plate waste," the agency said, meaning the
meat and other scraps that diners leave on their plates in restaurants and
that is rendered into the meat and bone meal added to feed. That material
interferes with tests for prohibited proteins in the animal feed, the agency
said.

Finally, the new rules say equipment that makes feed with meat or bone meal
can no longer be used to make cattle feed.

Consumer groups praised the rules on animal feed but said there should be
even more restrictions.

Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, a
consumer group in Washington, said: "This is long, long overdue. I wonder
whether it's too little too late.

"They've been legally on notice for seven years that they need to close all
these loopholes. Everything they're doing, science organizations have
requested long ago."

Dr. Michael Hansen, a scientist at the Consumers Union, said, "It's a good
step forward, but it's not good enough."

A remaining loophole, Dr. Hansen said, is allowing rendered matter from
cows to be fed to pigs and chickens and rendered pigs and chickens to be fed
back to cows. In theory, that sequence could bring the disease full circle,
back to cows. In Europe, cows cannot be fed any animal matter.

Dr. Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine at
the food and drug agency, said there was no evidence that pigs or chickens
could transmit mad cow disease.

Nonetheless, Mr. Thompson said the rules might be changed in the future to
stop such practices.

"We're looking at that," he said. "It's reasonable to say it could be
changed in the future."

With regard to products meant for people, the new rules say that from now on
material from animals that die on the farm or from "downer" cows, which
cannot walk, will be banned from use in cosmetics and dietary supplements.
The ban will also apply to foods with traces of meat, items that the food
and drug agency rather than the Agriculture Department regulates.

Also banned from products for humans will be the tissues most likely to
carry the infectious agent like the brain, skull, eyes and spinal cord of
animals 30 months or older and the tonsils and part of the small intestine
of all cattle. Because a product called mechanically separated meat may
carry infectious tissue, it will also be banned.

Dr. Murray M. Lumpkin, principal associate commissioner of the food and drug
agency, said he did not expect any products to be recalled. Cosmetics
carried little if any risk, Dr. Lumpkin said, but "certain supplements
contain as a major constituent cattle neuronal tissue or other parts from
cows."

Because those tissues are not allowed in foods, they should not be allowed
in supplements, either, he said.

Dr. Tod Cooperman, president of ConsumerLab.com, an independent laboratory
that tests dietary supplements to see whether they contain the active
ingredients that they claim, said high-risk cow products were most likely to
be contained in "glandulars," supplements made from brains, pituitary glands
and testicles of cattle and promoted to enhance muscle and bone growth and
to prevent Alzheimer's disease or cure other disorders.

He estimated that $50 million to $100 million of "glandulars" were sold
annually in the United States.