January 24, 2004 Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO) by Todd Hartman

Many of the violations at the 27 firms cited involved failure to properly label animal feed containing meat and bone meal, or MBM, rendered from the remains of slaughtered cattle. Without such a label, the risk is higher that someone could inadvertently feed the MBM back to cattle - the primary way mad cow disease is transmitted.

Other violations include failing to keep proper records of who purchased MBM. Such information would be critical for regulators trying to track down where a cow might have contracted the disease should a case emerge in Colorado or elsewhere.

"We consider all of the (violations) serious," said Jim Miller, policy director for the Colorado Department of Agriculture, adding that what appear to be minor labeling or paperwork issues can lead to far bigger problems.

In all, state agriculture officials have repeatedly inspected the just over 100 feed manufacturers in Colorado since mid-1998, a year after the federal government banned the use of MBM for cattle feed. That means roughly one-quarter of Colorado feed companies have violated the rules since they took effect. And in most cases, companies were cited for more than one offense.

But Miller chalked most of the violations up to a learning curve. In the most recent round of inspections, he said, the agency didn't find a single case of a company violating the ban. "We were very satisfied," he said.

Such findings appear to mimic those on the national level, where the Food and Drug Administration reported an initial compliance rate with MBM-related rules of about 75 percent in the late 1990s. This month, however, the FDA said the national compliance rate was 99 percent.

Manufacturing and selling feed with MBM isn't illegal. In fact, the material can still be fed to other livestock, such as hogs and chickens. But the government doesn't allow such feed to be given to cattle, hence rules requiring warning labels and other tracking of the material.

The Colorado violations are contained in a state Department of Agriculture database obtained by the Rocky Mountain News on Friday. The details revealed in the state database come about a month after the country's first known case of mad cow disease, found in a dairy cow in Washington state.

It's unknown whether the violations uncovered by state inspectors led to any instances of cattle being fed MBM. But consumer activists have long warned that there are likely leaks in the MBM ban, and that cows in the United States and Canada - and elsewhere - are still occasionally eating infected feed.

In 2002, the General Accounting Office criticized the FDA for failing to adequately enforce the feed ban. The report said the GAO "identified some noncompliant (feed manufacturing) firms that had not been reinspected for two or more years and instances where no enforcement action had occurred even though the firms had been found non compliant on multiple inspections."

In Colorado, the FDA has shared the inspection effort with the state agriculture department. Since 2000, however, the state agency has also conducted inspections under its own authority, after changes to state law relating to the MBM ban.

For their part, Colorado's agricultural officials have levied just one fine, according to Jim Thurman, who runs the agency's inspection unit. In most cases, however, the agency did require manufacturers to halt sales of certain products until they corrected their violations.

"When we first started doing this in the late 1990s, the emphasis was more on education," Thurman said. "Nobody knew what records to keep. It was a huge education effort. Since that time, the effort has paid off."

A separate FDA database reviewed by the News isn't nearly as detailed as the Colorado Department of Agriculture's. The FDA records show eight Front Range firms that deal with animal feed have taken "voluntary action" after inspections to fix feed-related problems. But the database doesn't give any information on what those problems were.

One firm - Feed Products Inc., in Denver - appeared in both databases. But it couldn't be determined Friday if those were the result of separate inspections by the two agencies, or whether the information was overlapping the two databases.

Feed Products Inc. was also the lone firm fined by the state for its violation.

The amount of the fine wasn't included in the database, however. And Thurman of the state agriculture department couldn't cite an amount.

According to the state database the firm was fined because it "Distributed bone meal that they had repackaged and sold to two (Colorado) feed firms." It was also cited, but not fined, for "possible cross-contamination of other feed supplements," according to the database.

No one answered the phone at the company Friday evening.