Feed ban no-brainer: expert
Feds pressured to 'harmonize' on high-risk tissues
Published: Thursday, June 08, 2006
VANCOUVER -- The federal government is being pressured to wait for American action before banning the use of cattle brains, corpses and other "high-risk" material in animal feed, pet food and fertilizer to prevent the spread of mad-cow disease.
"There has been a lot of pushback from industry, they want to harmonize with the Americans," says Dr. Graham Clarke, director of the animal industry division at Agriculture and Agri-food Canada.
He told a meeting on brain-wasting diseases here this week the government "is obviously listening" to the arguments and couldn't say when the longawaited ban would go into force.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced in 2004 it would follow Europe's lead and ban use of "specifi ed risk material," or SRM, in animal feed and fertilizer. SRM includes condemned cattle and dead stock, as well as the brains, spinal cords, tonsils, eyeballs and bits of small intestine from cattle that can harbour high concentrations of prions, the infectious agents that cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), known as mad cow disease.
Clarke said Agri-food Canada has consulted with the provinces and industry, produced a detailed plan for collecting and handling SRMs and the government has allocated $80 million to help implement the ban.
But he couldn't say when the government would enact the legislation to end the use of SRM in feed -- a ban consumer groups and leading scientists say is long overdue.
"In my opinion, the enhanced feed ban should be instituted as soon as possible," says Dr. Neil Cashman, scientifi c director of PrioNet Canada, a research network studying prion diseases such as BSE.
He's echoed by several scientists, including a leading U.S. expert on BSE.
"Canada has to do what is important for Canada, to protect Canada," Dr.
Linda Detwiler, of the University of Maryland, told the meeting.
She said in an interview that eliminating diseased cattle and high-risk organs from the animal food chain is scientifi - cally sound, and the U.S. should introduce a similar ban.
"The U.S. needs to follow Canada's lead," said Detwiler.
Canada currently has a partial ban on the use of cattle slaughter waste. In 1997, the government banned the feeding of cattle remains back to cattle and other ruminants, but it still allows cattle remains and SRMs to be used in feed for chickens, hogs and pets.
There's concern and evidence that cross-contamination of feed streams can contribute to the spread of the infectious and persistent prions that cause BSE. At the urging of an international team of animal health experts, CFIA, in 2004, proposed the SRM ban.
Clarke told the meeting it would be ideal if Canada and the U.S. could ban use of SRM at the same time since so much livestock and feed crosses the border.
Canada has uncovered fi ve homegrown cases of mad cow disease so far, and the United States has reported three cases.
While there have been no trade sanctions resulting from the two Canadian cases to turn up this year, earlier cases provoked U.S. and Japanese embargoes on imports of Canadian cows and beef that cost Canada's cattle farmers billions before they were lifted last year.
The most recent Canadian case of BSE was in a dairy cow in B.C. in April.
The possibility of cross-contamination of feed is being examined as a possible source of the infection.