January 8, 2004 Isthmus (Madison, Wisconsin) By Brian McCombie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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