Canadian Food Inspection Agency responds to feed industry tests

OTTAWA (CP) - The Canadian Food Inspection Agency responded Thursday to tests and reports that suggest some feed mills have not followed federal rules set up to prevent mad cow disease.

One report said secret tests conducted earlier this year by the agency show 20 of 28 test samples of vegetable feed had undeclared animal protein in them.

The report also said some mills failed to prevent the contamination of ruminant feeds with feed containing ruminant meat and bone meal - the main way bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) can be spread.

While the test results were accurate, the way some people have interpreted them are not, said CFIA spokesman Dr. Brian Evans.

"I think the public should not be worried about the reality that human error can occur in any production system," said Evans, who noted the tests were not secret.

"People are making the assumption here that this somehow constitutes or represents a risk from the BSE perspective, and I don't believe that this is what this information is telling us at all."

The rules established to deal with BSE are being complied with by the feed industry at a very high level, he said.

The federal government banned the feeding of most mammal proteins to ruminant animals such as cattle in 1997 as a precaution against BSE, also known as mad cow disease.

Since last July the CFIA has also required that certain cattle tissues at risk of spreading BSE must be removed from the human food supply.

Evans said it would be wrong to assume that any cross-contamination mentioned in the reports involved material from cattle, or that the vegetable feed was destined to be fed to cattle.

He said the tests don't show that there is an ongoing exposure of mad cow disease in the feed industry. But he acknowledged the risk is still there.

"We are not discounting that there are opportunities for cross-contamination in the feed system. Those opportunities do exist."

To further mitigate that risk, federal regulators last week proposed banning high-risk material from animal feed, pet food and fertilizers.

The tests and reports have prompted the Animal Nutrition Association of Canada to demand a meeting with the CFIA to clear the air.

Kathleen Sullivan, the association's spokeswoman, said the industry is concerned about how the media have interpreted the results.

"We are concerned that the conclusions are misleading," she said. "Unidentified animal proteins don't equate to BSE infection."

Sullivan said the association and the mills were told by the CFIA that the tests were done as a training exercise, not for rule compliance.

The association represents about 500 feed mills across Canada. The industry employs 9,000 people and has annual sales of about $3.5 billion.

"It is very important for us to maintain our credibility and let the public know how committed we are to food safety," she said.

Evans said the agency is working to develop better test methods and better labelling rules.

He said some vegetable-based animal feeds are boosted with vitamins and minerals that could include material from animals.

Now, on the other side of the border ...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6738982/

Union: Meat plants violate mad cow rules Banned brains, spinal cords may still enter food supplyBy

Jon Bonné
MSNBC
Dec. 20, 2004

Parts of cattle supposedly banned under rules enacted after the nation's first case of mad cow disease are making it into the human food chain, according to the union that represents federal inspectors in meat plants.

The National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals, which represents meat and poultry inspectors in federally regulated plants nationwide, told the U.S. Department of Agriculture in a letter earlier this month that body parts known as "specified risk materials" were being allowed into the production chain.

The parts include the brains, skulls, spinal cords and lower intestines of cattle older than 30 months. These body parts, thought to be most likely to transmit the malformed proteins that cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, were banned from the human food supply by USDA officials last January.

The union based its Dec. 8 complaint on reports from inspectors in several states, though it declined to say which ones.

It said that the inspectors found heads and carcasses of some cows on slaughter and processing lines that were not always correctly marked as being older than 30 months. That age is the cutoff for rules governing the use of higher-risk materials in human food; any animal older than 30 months must have any such parts removed before it can be cut up into meat.

But plant employees responsible for checking the age of cattle were not always marking each older carcass. In the course of their regular work, inspectors on the processing lines checked cattle heads themselves and found some from older animals that had been passed through unmarked.

"We couldn't determine that every part out of there was from a cow under 30 months," Stan Painter, the union's chairman, told MSNBC.com. "There was no way to determine which one was which."

The government and the beef industry frequently point to the SRM ban, as it is known, as the single best measure to ensure that any meat possibly infected by mad cow disease is kept out of the human food supply. The ban was enacted this year after the first U.S. case of the disease was detected in a Washington state dairy cow in December 2003.

Research has shown that most of the risk from infected animals lies in neural tissue, such as the brain, not muscle meat. Mad cow disease has been linked to a related human disease; both are always fatal.

USDA spokesman Steven Cohen said the ban was working, as were age checks on cattle. "We feel very strongly that this is being done," Cohen said. "It's being done correctly, and it's being verified by the people whose job it is to do that."

Federal oversight for the age checks is usually performed by offline inspectors — usually a more senior inspector at a plant who handles larger issues such as food safety plans. They are directed to perform spot checks on plant employees who perform the age checks using paperwork as well as indicators such as the growth of the animals' teeth.

But current oversight would cover a small fraction of the total animals that pass through any given plant — just 2 percent to 3 percent, by the union's estimate.

In its letter, sent to the head of the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, the union also reported that some inspectors were "told not to intervene" when they saw body parts of some older animals, sent for packing with those of younger animals. This is despite export requirements for certain parts that have been set by U.S. trading partners.

Specifically, the union said, kidneys from older animals were sent down the line to be packed for the Mexican market, which prohibits them from cows over 30 months. When the inspectors complained, Painter said, "The agency basically told the inspectors, 'Don't worry about it.'"

Cohen said the age checks, which are usually performed before slaughter, are meant to be handled by supervisors and veterinary medical officers. "It is not the online inspectors whose role it is to determine" an animal's age, Cohen said.

"The inspector on the line's role is to look for disease," he said. "If an online inspector feels as though something is not being done they should talk to their supervisors."

The online inspectors performed the checks on their own amid concerns that older animals were not being marked as such, according to the union and to an attorney familiar with the matter.

The cases referenced in the letter were apparently reported to supervisors and to USDA district offices, Painter said, but the inspectors were told, "Don't worry about it. That's the plant's responsibility."

The union has not yet received a response, he added. Cohen said the agency would have a response soon, and noted that the department's inspector general is auditing how well plants comply with the ban.

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