Major loopholes in mad cow safety standards

updated 6:52 p.m. ET June 17, 2005

WASHINGTON - American cattle are eating chicken litter, cattle blood and restaurant leftovers that could help transmit mad cow disease — a gap in the U.S. defense that the Bush administration promised to close nearly 18 months ago.

“Once the cameras were turned off and the media coverage dissipated, then it’s been business as usual, no real reform, just keep feeding slaughterhouse waste,” said John Stauber, an activist and co-author of “Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?”

He contended, “The entire U.S. policy is designed to protect the livestock industry’s access to slaughterhouse waste as cheap feed.”

Another possible case
The government is now investigating another possible case of mad cow disease in the United States. The beef cow had been tested and declared free of the disease last November, but new tests came up positive, and a laboratory in England is conducting more tests.

The Food and Drug Administration promised to tighten feed rules shortly after the first case of mad cow disease was confirmed in the U.S., in a Washington state cow in December 2003.

INTERACTIVE

“Today we are bolstering our BSE firewalls to protect the public,” Mark McClellan, then-FDA commissioner, said on Jan. 26, 2004. FDA said it would ban blood, poultry litter and restaurant plate waste from cattle feed and require feed mills to use separate equipment to make cattle feed. Chicken litter is ground cover for the birds that absorbs manure, spilled feed and feathers.

However, last July, the FDA scrapped those restrictions. McClellan’s replacement, Lester Crawford, said an international team of experts assembled by the Agriculture Department was calling for even stronger rules and that FDA would produce new restrictions in line with those recommendations.

'Just a lot of talk'
Today, the FDA still has not done what it promised to do. The agency declined interviews, saying in a statement only that there is no timeline for new restrictions.

“It’s just a lot of talk,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., a senior House Democrat on food and farm issues. “It’s a lot of talk, a lot of press releases, and no action.”

Unlike other infections, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE, or mad cow disease, doesn’t spread through the air. As far as scientists know, cows get the disease only by eating brain and other nerve tissues of already-infected cows.

Ground-up cattle remains left over from slaughtering operations were used as protein in cattle feed until 1997, when an outbreak of mad cow cases in Britain prompted the U.S. to order the feed industry to quit doing it. Unlike Britain, however, the U.S. feed ban has exceptions.

For example, it’s legal to put ground-up cattle remains in chicken feed. Feed that spills from cages mixes with chicken waste on the ground, then is swept up for use in cattle feed.

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