December 16, 2004 Vancouver Sun  by Chad Skelton

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.