Feed Mills Still Breaking Mad Cow Rules, FDA Warns

Hundreds of feed mills are still breaking rules meant to control the spread of mad cow disease, although compliance has improved since the government began reinspecting some plants in January, federal officials said Friday.

Growing pressure from the meatpacking and fast-food industries should help force feed companies into compliance, said George Mitchell, a senior official with the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Veterinary Assn.

McDonald’s Corp. has given its meat suppliers until April 1 to certify that the cattle they buy were fed in accordance with FDA regulations. Now meatpackers, cattle producers and feed mills are all developing certification programs designed to show they are in compliance with the rules.

The FDA outlawed the feeding of mammalian meat and bone meal to cattle, sheep and goats in 1997 and imposed a series of rules to ensure that feed mills comply with the ban. The feed regulations are designed to keep the brain-wasting disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy, otherwise known as mad cow, from spreading if it ever reaches this country. The disease has devastated the beef industry in Europe but has not been found in the United States.

Thirteen percent of 397 feed mills that are licensed by the FDA and also process meat and bone meal have no system for preventing those products from being mixed with other ingredients, the agency said Friday. Fifteen percent were not using required warning labels, the agency reported. Mills must be licensed by the FDA if they add medications to feed.

There are another 1,829 unlicensed feed mills that handle meat and bone meal, and a third of them did not comply with the labeling requirement. Eighteen percent did not have systems to prevent mix-ups in feed ingredients, the agency said.

The feed industry has developed a voluntary certification program for mills that want to document for customers that they are adhering to the FDA rules. Inspections of participating mills are expected to start this week, said David Bossman, president of the American Feed Industry Assn.

The industry group also has adopted new voluntary safeguards that include removing all cattle and sheep products from plants that make cattle feed.

That move was intended to prevent a repeat of an incident in January when 1,200 Texas cattle were quarantined after they ate animal feed containing the banned ingredients. The feed maker, Purina Mills, said it may have mistakenly mixed meat bone meal into a cow feed supplement.