Posted by GoatWorld on January 12, 2003 at 16:57:02:
CREUTZFELDT-JAKOB DISEASE: U.S. may ban more animal parts from feed
Jeff Nesmith - Cox Washington Bureau
Sunday, January 12, 2003
Washington --- In an effort to reduce chances that an infectious form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease could become established in this country, the government is considering a ban on ''high risk'' animal parts in all rendered products.
The move would expand restrictions on animal feed imposed after an outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or ''mad cow disease,'' in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s.
Spongiform encephalopathy appears in various species. In sheep it is known as scrapie; in deer or elk as chronic wasting disease.
Unlike classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the new variant appears to cross species.
Fears about the variant in the United States are behind the Food and Drug Administration's request for industry comments on how difficult and costly it would be to remove brains and spinal cords from rendered products. After reviewing this information, officials will consider whether to propose a rule requiring a ban.
Animal waste parts left over from meat and poultry slaughtering and processing are commonly added to the feed of other animals.
Most of those animals end up on American dinner or restaurant tables. Some parts are again left over and added to the feed of the next generation of animals.
This process frightens some Creutzfeldt-Jakob experts and has caused consumer activists to demand the removal of all rendered animal parts from the feed of animals Americans eat.
The FDA already prohibits the inclusion of rendered parts of ruminants and minks from feed given to other ruminants, primarily cattle, sheep and goats.
But feed manufacturers are free to put cooked-down chicken and pig parts in cattle feed. Cow parts can be legally added to chicken and pig feed.
Cooked down and ground into a brown sugarlike powder, the leftover parts are used to enhance the protein content of livestock feed.
Requiring rendering plants to remove brains and spinal cords --- known as ''high risk'' tissues --- from all rendered products would be ''a good step, but it is not enough,'' said Jean Halloran, a policy specialist with the Consumers Union, the organization that publishes Consumer Reports magazine.
''It does not keep deer and elk out of the feed stream, for example, and it doesn't ban the practice of feeding cow parts to chicken and pigs or chickens and pigs to cows,'' she said.
She said the carcasses of ''road kill'' deer often are taken to rendering plants for disposal.
A NEW VARIANT OF FATAL DISEASE
Cases of a new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease have risen since the first ones were seen in the mid-1990s. It might be related to eating the meat of animals with mad cow disease:
'95: 3
'96: 11
'97: 10
'98: 18
'99: 16
'00: 29
'01: 21
'02: 23
Note: All cases reported in Britain except one death in France in 1996, 2000 and 2001, and three in 2002; one death in Ireland in 1999; and one death each in the United States, Canada and Italy in 2002.
Sources: British Department of Health, French Institute of Health Monitoring, news reports.
Knight Ridder Tribune