January 4, 2004 Chicago Tribune By Delroy Alexander

Although health-conscious consumers long have worried about what a hamburger or steak will do to their arteries, few have given much thought to the risks lurking in the diets of the animals they consume daily.

But that changed Dec. 23 after a single Holstein in Washington state was diagnosed with mad cow disease--a brain-wasting ailment. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a similar human malady associated with mad cow disease, has killed more than 150 people around the world, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Spurred by consumer worries, import bans and battered cattle prices, investigators are working fast to get to the root of the disease's first appearance in the United States. Having identified the cow's ties to a herd from Alberta, Canada, efforts are focused on what the suspect cow may have been fed in its earliest days.

If investigators can show that the cow was infected by feed tainted with the remains of a diseased animal, it would explain the origins of the Washington case--an important first step in calming the fears of more than two dozen nations that have banned $3.2 billion in annual imports of U.S. beef, according to experts.

"We know that our exposure to the disease comes from Europe, coming from animals and feed that may have been imported before the appropriate bans were put in place," said Dr. Ron DeHaven, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief veterinarian.

This is familiar territory for beef industry experts, who believe bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, is spread when cattle eat feed containing protein from infected cattle.

Burning in the heart of the global feed industry is a lust for a cheap source of protein in addition to grasses, corn and other grains used to fatten cows.

Farming practices also have focused heavily on extracting more from the same number of cows and land resources. Pumping extra protein into the diet of cows has played a key role.

Protein is a critical factor in building healthy muscles and a fully functioning nervous system in cattle. It also helps cows produce more milk.

To help speed up the development of cattle and dispose of waste, the ground-up remains of old cows commonly were used to produce an alternative source of protein, said Chuck Hurst, an animal nutritionist with more than 30 years of experience in helping cattle producers increase livestock productivity.

"American consumers demand a tastier cut of steak, so farmers tried to give them that and have used science to help in the diets to ensure cost-effective means of feeding cows," said Hurst. "Protein is critical and can be costly, depending on what you use."

The use of meat and bone meal as part of a steer's diet increased substantially by the end of the 1970s, as scientists better understood the workings of cattle, and technology advanced. In addition, continuous production methods sped up the rendering process and improved the ability to extract fats from renderings--making animal products common in feed for more than 25 years.

1997 outbreak brings ban

But in 1997, in response the European outbreak of mad cow disease, the United States banned the practice of using the remains of cattle as a source of protein for other cattle. As part of that response, the ban stretched to most cud-chewing livestock or ruminants--cattle, sheep, goats and deer--which all have a similar digestive system that allows them to use hay and grass as their main foods.

In fact, officials think that the Washington state Holstein and a Canadian cow that tested positive for mad cow disease in May--the only two confirmed cases in North America--may have fed on the same contaminated feed.

Whatever the source, the feeding of 35 million cattle slaughtered annually in the United States remains a big business. It is an industry dominated by many of the same names that supply our choicest cuts of meat and poultry.

Dairy giant Land O'Lakes Inc. is the nation's largest producer of animal feed. And Tyson Foods Inc., Cargill Inc., Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Pilgrim's Pride Corp. are part of a multibillion-dollar industry that produces more than 100 million tons of feed annually.

The top 100 companies operate more than 680 feed mills, according to Feed Management magazine's annual survey. Even with such big names, the feed industry remains fragmented and has been consolidating for years. For example, Land O'Lakes feed sales in the first nine months of last year were $1.8 billion, basically even with the previous year's results.

Feeding cows expensive

A cow can eat about 2 percent of its body weight daily. Feed normally accounts for the single largest cost associated with beef and dairy cattle, close to a third of the cost of raising a cow, according to farm economists.

In Illinois, feed costs are higher and run at more than half the cost of producing beef for sale, said Dale Latz, a farm management specialist with the University of Illinois who produces a regular report on cattle costs for farmers.

In light of such tight operating margins, farmers can save thousands of dollars by carefully balancing the diet of a cow, which has to grow from 500 pounds to 1,200 pounds to be marketable--weight gain that has to be achieved by the time the cow is 20 months to 23 months old.

One small farmer in Illinois said a nutritionist helped her save $100 per head of cattle by recommending that she reduce the corn silage and slightly increase the soybean protein content in her feed.

"My cattle developed faster, and I saved $50,000," the farmer, who asked not to be named, said about her herd of 500 cattle. "That is the difference between a profit and loss for me."

By adding soybean and other protein-rich feeds to the diet of a dairy cow, scientists like Hurst have found that they also produce larger amounts of milk.

"The amount of feed and protein cows are fed depends on many factors and is strictly controlled," said Dave Marshall, the head of the grain merchandising department of AgriPride F.S. Inc., a southwestern Illinois farmers co-op that provides about 6 million bushels of grain for feed each year. "Everybody wants to find the lowest-cost solution to feeding, because it can save a lot of money."

Fewer alternatives in Europe

Foodstuffs vary greatly depending on location and access to crops, not just in North America but elsewhere in the world.

High-fiber grass and hay still is used, particularly on organic farms, but it can be low in protein. Grains such as corn, barley and oats can provide high protein and are common in the Midwest, as are soybeans and canola meal.

U.S. farmers also use such byproducts as sweet-corn cannery waste, potato shavings and apple pulp to feed cattle.

In fact, the United States, with its abundance of farmland and cheap crops, has more options than most countries.

But in much of Europe, such as the U.K. where mad cow disease first was identified, neither is readily available, and feeds are often imported.

A lack of cheap crops to use as feed is one of the primary reasons BSE developed in Europe, say experts. It also explains the reason why protein additives such as meat and bone meal were more commonplace in Europe than the U.S., where soybean meal and other substitutes are grown.

"A beef cattle being fattened might have 10 percent protein in its ration, while a dairy cow's ration is going to be almost double that," said Hurst. "As there was a lot of the meat and bone meal around in the U.K., it made sense to use it. It was a very good, reasonably priced source of protein."

Rendering processes separate fat from bone and protein--sending the fat for use in chemicals, soap, candles and some feed, while bone and protein are turned into a dry powder. That bone and protein powder sells for about $275 a ton in the U.S. as meat and bone meal. Corn meal costs about $235 a ton here.

Finding substitute markets

Feed producers have found other markets for their bone meal derived from cow and other animal renderings in food for the "three Ps": poultry, pigs and pets. But restrictions were tightened last week, banning head and spinal cord tissue for use in feeding other animals.

"The primary focus of the dairy industry is to produce milk. But the sale of their old cows represents about 20 percent of the value of that cow," said Marshall, a former cattle farmer.

"When they sell their cows to the meat plant, they recoup some of the value of the cow."

Although the 1997 ban ended the feeding of the remains of dead beef carcasses to other cattle, meat and bone meal remains a widely used commodity for providing protein in the diets of many animals that end up in our homes or on our tables.

Consumer groups again have warned that feeding any meat byproducts to any animals that enter the human food-supply chain presents a risk that we should avoid.

"The Food and Drug Administration should ban the feeding of all rendered animal remains to food animals," said Michael Hansen, a senior research associate at Consumers Union, in a statement.

"Consumers Union is concerned that rendered cattle remains can be fed to swine and chickens, and that rendered swine and chicken remains can in turn be fed back to cattle. This opens the door for mad cow disease to circulate among our food animals."

But the nation's rulemakers disagree and side with views in the feed industry.

"There is no scientific evidence that animals such as pigs and chickens can get the disease such as BSE," said the USDA's DeHaven. "Therefore, that action [of stopping the use of meat and bone meal in their feed] has not been taken".

And the American Feed Industry Association cautions about the potential problems banning cattle byproducts altogether could create.

"There has never been an instance of BSE transferring into pigs or chickens. We've tried to feed it to them, inject it into them on purpose, but it just won't catch," said David Bossman, president of association.

"You have to be careful with what you do. Just because you ban something, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There will still be the need to dispose of the cows remains and renderings.

"What you don't want to happen is for a black market to develop or it be sent overseas without ever having been inspected as it is now."

Mad cow case shows risk of push for protein in feed

In fact, if DeHaven would have read his own agency's website [1] he would have found reference to the very study that proved the fact that pigs can indeed become infected by Mad Cow disease.[2] Their statements to the contrary are just another example of the collusion of animal agribusiness and our government in misleading the public about the safety of the American meat supply.

As reported in the British science journal New Scientist, internationally recognized Mad Cow expert Dr. Paul Brown, medical director for the US Public Health Service, believes that pigs and poultry could indeed be harboring Mad Cow disease and passing it on to humans, adding that pigs are especially sensitive to the disease. "It's speculation," he said, "but I am perfectly serious."[3] We need to err on the side of caution and stop the feeding of slaughterhouse waste, manure and blood to all farmed animals.

[1] www.aphis.usda.gov/vs/ceah/cei/bsbibps.pdf
[2] Dawson M, Wells GAH, Parker BNJ, et al. 1990. Primary parenteral transmission of bovine spongiform encephalopathy to the pig. [Correspondence]. Veterinary Record 127(13):338.
[3] Pearce, Fred. "BSE May Lurk in Pigs and Chickens." New Scientist 6 April 1996: 5.

--BSE coordinator