By Robert Pore
robert.pore@theindependent.com
A decision by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) earlier this month to solicit public comments solely on delaying the implementation of a new feed ban, rather than soliciting public comment on the ban itself, is being criticized by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.
According to NCBA, it has been opposed to the enhanced feed ban since it was originally proposed in 2005 and continues to urge FDA to open the rule to public comment and delay implementation until they have had adequate time to consider the many problems caused by the ban.
“Cattle producers across the country have been suffering as a result of this proposed rule months before it is scheduled to take effect,” said Dr. Elizabeth Parker, chief veterinarian for NCBA.
She said members of Congress and the Senate have joined NCBA in petitioning the FDA to reopen the rule itself for public comment so that the people impacted can share their stories.
“Instead, the FDA is only allowing seven days of comments on whether to delay the implementation of the rule by 60 days,” Parker said. “This is a weak and ineffective response to the issues already arising from this ill-considered action.”
According to NCBA, during the past two decades industry and government have worked together to put in place science-based measures that have proven successful in preventing and reducing the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in the U.S.
NCBA said the incidence of BSE worldwide has “dramatically” decreased due to the many measures put into place, including a series of interlocking safeguards and science-based mitigation practices.
“We must continue to look to the science to avoid over-regulating the industry and creating policy that doesn’t meet our objective of a safer animal health system,” Parker said.
Since 1997, Parker said, the U.S. proactive “ruminant to ruminant” feed ban, combined with other government and industry safeguards, has proven to be “highly successful in limiting BSE in the U.S. herd.”
Parker said the U.S. has an extremely low-level risk of BSE, as demonstrated by years of robust USDA surveillance and confirmed by the U.S. “BSE Controlled Risk” designation by the OIE, the international animal health standard setting body.
“The FDA did not do a risk assessment for this so-called enhanced feed ban,” said Parker. “The prevalence of BSE in the healthy cattle population of the United States is negligible, and globally this situation has nearly been eradicated.”
Parker said the enhanced feed ban would move beyond the current ban in that it would prohibit certain cattle-derived risk materials from all animal feed. As such, she said, the enhanced feed ban would provide negligible benefits to animal health or food safety.
“It would also create tremendous costs for ranchers, exacerbate disposal issues, and generate environmental concerns,” Parker said.
Beginning as early as December 2008, NCBA reports that many renderers stopped picking up dead livestock because of the severe economic realities of this proposal.
For several months, NCBA said, they have received numerous reports from producers and veterinarians having increased difficulty in getting dead animals picked up. If they are able to find pickup services, the prices charged by haulers and renderers are significantly higher than they ever have been.
“This rule has essentially ended rendering services in many parts of the country, and left producers with no legal alternatives,” said Parker.“These are 1,200-pound animals. It is unrealistic and simplistic to think that producers can dispose of them in their backyards. The environmental and economic consequences are enormous and FDA has the responsibility to consider those concerns before implementing this rule.”
According to NCBA, FDA estimates the new regulations would generate an additional 28 million pounds of prohibited material derived from healthy cattle at the slaughter plant level and will create an estimated 26.2 percent to 41.6 percent decrease in cattle carcasses being picked up by rendering services. That translates into an additional 369 million to 577 million pounds annually that will have to be disposed of by some other means.
This is in addition to the approximately 3 billion pounds of ruminant carcasses resulting annually from natural causes, according to NCBA. Parker said that while FDA acknowledges these very real concerns, it has yet to identify any viable solutions.
NCBA said the rule, as originally proposed in October 2005, failed an economic cost benefit analysis as required by the Office of Management and Budget and was sent back to FDA for revision.
According to NCBA, the revised final rule published in April 2008 was a political decision, disregarding the economic consequences and ignoring risk analysis.
The FDA is providing the public with seven days — through this Thursday — to submit comments on whether the enhanced feed ban should be delayed for 60 days.
According to R-CALF USA, USDA increased the risk of BSE in the United States by allowing into the U.S. millions of Canadian cattle, particularly cattle more than 30 months (OTM) of age that are of higher risk for the disease. USDA states that the prevalence of BSE in the Canadian cattle herd is between three cases per million and eight cases per million. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the level of BSE prevalence in the Canadian cattle herd is up to 48-fold higher than the prevalence estimated in the U.S. cattle herd.
Just in 2008, nearly 1.6 million Canadian cattle, including OTM cattle, were imported into the United States. A recent USDA risk assessment model that incorporated a BSE prevalence rate for Canada of fewer than four cases per million head of cattle predicted the U.S. would import more than 100 BSE-infected cattle from Canada during the next 20 years.
R-CALF USA said that the current U.S. feed ban, implemented in 1997, is “actually weaker than Canada’s initial feed ban because it does not ban the feeding of plate waste and poultry litter to cattle.”
It said that Canada’s feed ban has proved ineffective in controlling the spread of BSE in Canadian cattle, and after Canada began detecting multiple cases of BSE in animals born years after the feed ban, it relented to the repeated urging of international scientists and then enhanced its feed ban.
Canada’s enhanced feed ban, implemented in July 2007, now protects Canadian consumers against the spread of BSE from Canadian cattle by closing known transmission routes, including cross-contamination and inadvertent feeding of contaminated cattle parts, according to R-CALF USDA.
But according to R-CALF USA, the FDA now plans to delay providing U.S. consumers with the same level of protection afforded Canadian consumers against these same Canadian cattle that are now being imported into the United States.
“This last-minute proposal to postpone the new FDA feed ban, needed to minimize the heighten BSE risk from Canadian cattle, is designed to position the U.S. cattle industry between a rock and a hard place, and we hope that U.S. producers and U.S. consumers will see through this manipulative tactic and force USDA and the FDA to do what’s right,” said R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard.
Like the original Canadian feed ban, Bullard said, the current U.S. feed ban is insufficient to address the heightened BSE risk in Canadian cattle.
“Either USDA must immediately eliminate the source of this heightened BSE risk by prohibiting the importation of OTM Canadian cattle, or FDA must immediately implement the 2008 BSE final rule to mitigate this heightened risk. There are no responsible alternatives,” he said.