In the United States, it was the announcement this spring in London by French and Italian scientists at an international transmissible spongiform encephalopathy meeting that the United States’ last two cases were “atypical” BSE, meaning the animal tissue tested didn’t present as traditional BSE, but looked different. Atypical cases have also been reported in France, Poland, and Japan, among others.
Then Canada, surely frustrated with U.S. inaction, decided to finalize changes to its ruminant feeding restrictions, listing every ruminant specified risk material as forbidden in food, feed, pet food, and fertilizer, but stopping short of other Draconian measures, including dedicated feed plants, requiring the dying of feeds, and so forth (see “International Report” page 32). The United States continues to wrestle with its proposed feed rule changes; however, the agency has finally acknowledged at industry meetings that the National Renderers Association’s submission of a private study on the economic impact of the proposed rule carries cost estimates far closer to reality than the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) original economic impact analysis.
In Canada, while the announcement of its sixth BSE case in early July was pretty standard, the report a week later of its seventh case, this time in a 50-month-old cow, is more problematic given the animal was born well after the feed ban was in place and is Canada’s second case born after the ban. The distinction between cases six and seven is best seen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) disinclination to send a team to help with the epidemiological investigation of case six, but a team was dispatched immediately to help with case seven.
And while these most recent North American developments may be situational and have little to do with calculated overall risk in Canada, in the United States, they have given life to efforts by the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, or R-CALF, to get the Ninth Circuit Court to rehear its original complaint against USDA for deeming Canada a “minimal risk” country and reopening the border to trade in certain live cattle and beef. Again, more money, time, and manpower being spent on efforts other than rebuilding the North American beef export machine.
USDA’s July 25, 2006, public meeting to present and take comments on its updated Harvard risk assessment of BSE on the current state of “risk” in the United States will be an interesting exercise. USDA contracted with the Harvard Center and Tuskeegee University in 1998, and the two institutions delivered the first Harvard Risk Assessment in 2001, and a revised assessment in 2003. When FDA implemented new protections after the first U.S. BSE case in 2003, USDA went back to Harvard in 2004 for an update using the new data available through December 2003.
Does the Harvard risk model include the possibility of a second strain, an “atypical” BSE, in the United States, and if it does, how will that change our “risk” in the eyes of our trading partners? Will it factor in two cases of BSE in Canadian cattle born after that country instituted feeding restrictions? Only time and study of the new assessment will tell.
The good news is Congress is so preoccupied with issues that will loom large in the November election, including immigration reform, that we’ve heard almost nothing from Capitol Hill on the state of BSE regulation and protections. There has been grumbling about USDA’s desire to scale back its testing of at-risk animals, and there’s the continuing drumbeat – and court action – for USDA to allow private company testing for BSE, but no firm focus by legislators. This is a very good thing.
Animal Fats Truly Environmentally Friendly
Animal fat-based biodiesel, along with that refined from used cooking oils and greases, are not getting their due. The popular media, university research, and the overall public attention paid to biofuels concentrates on ethanol, and if there is attention paid to biodiesel, it’s the soy-based variety. This is particularly galling because of the growing debate among policy wonks over “food versus fuel,” discussions that center on the redirection of corn and soybeans to domestic biofuels production, not to feed use, nor export, nor even other industrial uses.
A new study out of the National Academy of Sciences, done by researchers at the University of Minnesota and St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN, shows soy-based biodiesel is more environmentally friendly and produces more useable energy than ethanol. It is interesting to note that the study concludes that the future of replacing oil and gas lies with cellulosic ethanol made from switch grass and wheat straw grown on marginal land or waste plant materials.
The reason? Neither corn-based ethanol nor soy-based biodiesel can replace much petroleum without affecting the food supply, the study says. The study authors write that with a projected doubling of global food demand within the next 50 years, and an even greater demand for fuels, “there is a great need for renewable energy supplies that do not compete with the food supply.”
That’s exactly the beauty of animal fat-based biodiesel and that derived from used cooking oils and greases. It does not compete for the same raw material that goes to animal feed production or to cereal food production. In fact, it takes what the world considers to be waste products and turns it into a renewable fuel. This is true recycling and truly “environmentally friendly.”
View from Washington - August 2006 Render