Originally published June 28 2005
Mad cow disease still a danger to the American public, activist says
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
According to The Globe and Mail, although the scrutinizing of media attention to mad cow disease brought on many promises of reform, activist John Stauber says the practice of feeding cattle slaughterhouse waste continued as normal after the attention died down, which means U.S. meat eaters are still at risk from mad cow disease.
U.S. cattle are eating chicken litter, cattle blood and restaurant leftovers that could help transmit mad-cow disease --- a gap in the defences that the Bush administration promised to close nearly 18 months ago.
He contended that "the entire U.S. policy is designed to protect the livestock industry's access to slaughterhouse waste as cheap feed."
The Food and Drug Administration promised to tighten feed rules shortly after the first case of mad cow disease was confirmed in the United States in a Washington cow in December, 2003.
Ground-up cattle remains left over from slaughtering operations were used as protein in cattle feed until 1997, when a mad-cow outbreak in Britain prompted the United States to order the feed industry to quit doing it.
Unlike Britain, however, the U.S. feed ban has exceptions.
For example, it is legal to put ground-up cattle remains in chicken feed.
Scientists believe the BSE protein will survive the feed-making process and may even survive the trip through a chicken's gut.
Still, if cattle protein is in the system, she said in an interview, it is being fed to cattle.
Cattle protein can also be fed to chickens, pigs and household pets, which presents the risk of accidental contamination in a feed mill.
While new restrictions stalled, the administration also ignored the advice of its own experts to close the loopholes before allowing Canadian cattle back into the United States.
Cattle trade "should not resume unless and until" loopholes in the feed ban are closed, according to an internal Agriculture Department memo, written by its working group of BSE experts in the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, dated June 15, 2003, shortly after Canada's first case of mad-cow disease.
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