U.S.

Mad Cow Measures Checked

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

March 23, 2001 / 7:45 PM EST / CBS

Hundreds of feed mills are still breaking rules meant to control the spread of mad cow disease, although compliance has improved since the government began re-inspecting some plants in January, federal officials said Friday.

Growing pressure from the meatpacking and fast-food industries should help force feed companies into compliance, said George Mitchell, a senior official with the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Veterinary Medicine.

"It won't hurt. It's going to elevate awareness" of the regulations, Mitchell said.

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McDonald's Corp. has given its meat suppliers until April 1 to certify that the cattle they buy were fed in accordance to FDA regulations. Now, meatpackers, cattle producers and feed mills are all developing certification programs designed to show they are compliance with the rules.

The FDA outlawed the feeding of mammalian meat and bone meal to cattle, sheep and goats in 1997 and imposed a series of rules to ensure that feed mills comply with the ban.

The feed regulations are designed to keep the brain-wasting disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) — otherwise known as mad cow — from spreading if it ever reaches this country. The disease has devastated the beef industry in Europe but has not been found in the United States.

Thirteen percent of 397 feed mills that are licensed by FDA and also process meat and bone meal have no system for preventing those products from being mixed with other ingredients, the agency said Friday. Fifteen percent were not using required warning labels, the agency reported. Mills must be licensed by FDA if they add medications to feed.

There are another 1,829 unlicensed feed mills that handle meat and bone meal, and a third of them did not comply with the labeling requirement. Eighteen percent did not have systems tprevent mix-ups in feed ingredients, the agency said.

The FDA found higher compliance rates among animal rendering plants, which supply meat and bone meal to feed mills. Of 177 renderers that handle meat and bone meal, 96 percent labeled the products correctly, 86 percent had a system for keeping the prohibited meal out of feed mixes and 97 percent kept their records correctly.

Click here to learn more about Mad Cow.

The numbers were based on inspections that have taken place since 1998, involving state and federal inspectors conducting 10,240 visits to 10,065 sites.

Since January, the agency has re-inspected about 157 feed mills and rendering plants and one, a rendering facility, was still out of compliance, Mitchell said.

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The feed industry has developed a voluntary certification program for mills that want to document for customers they are adhering to the FDA rules. Inspections of participating mills are expected to start next week, said David Bossman, president of the American Feed Industry Association.

"If all of the meat buyers demand certification, nearly all of the feed mills will have certification," Bossman said at a conference sponsored by the meatpacking industry.

The industry group also has adopted new voluntary safeguards for feed makers that include removing all cattle and sheep products from plants that make cattle feed.

That move was intended to prevent a repeat of an incident in Janury when 1,200 Texas cattle were quarantined after they ate animal feed containing the banned ingredients. The feed maker, Purina Mills, said it may have mistakenly mixed meat bone meal into a cow feed supplement.

Also Friday, the Agriculture Department said there have been no signs of mad cow disease in 27 cattle that were brought into the country from Europe in the 1980s and 1990s before bans on their import. There are 21 of the cattle still alive in Texas, four in Vermont, two in Minnesota and one in Illinois.

The cattle are under quarantine and they are tested as each dies.

"All the tests have come back negative and no symptoms are showing," said Anna Cherry, a spokeswoman for USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.