In mid-November, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sent to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) its proposed feed ban regulation aimed at preventing the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
The proposed regulation is more lenient than Canada’s feed ban that took effect this past summer. According to FDA, if it does not strengthen its ban, it will be cheaper to slaughter cattle over 30 months old in the United States, which when coupled with new rules that allow imports of the older cattle means the United States may begin receiving an influx of animals that are at higher risk of having BSE, a consumer advocate says.
New U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations that took effect November 19, 2007, allow the import of cattle more than 30 months old. BSE starts to manifest after 30 months.
Tony Corbo of Food and Water Watch says some Canadian slaughterhouses have said they will stop taking older cattle in response to the new Canadian feed ban, and if those older cattle are sent to the United States, he also does not trust USDA to ensure that “specified risk materials” are properly removed from cattle to comply with the feed ban.
Theresa Keddy, a spokesperson for the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, disagrees with Corbo’s prediction of increased Canadian cattle imports. She says the age-verification standards and a weakened U.S. dollar make exporting cattle more expensive than complying with the new feed ban disposal regulations in Canada.
Imported cattle must have health certificates that contain the age of the animal so U.S. slaughterhouses know what to do with the cow during slaughter. USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) expects only 75,000 older Canadian cows per year to cross the border initially, though Corbo says it is unclear how APHIS arrived at this number, and he points out that the original estimation in APHIS’ proposed rule was 650,000.
“The exchange rate argument may have some truth to it because Canada recently announced that it will reduce its exports to the U.S. because of the low value of the dollar,” Corbo writes in an e-mail.
Current FDA policy bans specified risk material from ruminant feed only, allowing animal protein rendered from material such as brains and spinal cord in feed for other animals such as pets and poultry. FDA has proposed extending the 1997 regulation to all animal feed. However, the ban would still not include blood by-products, which FDA had considered banning but later backed off the idea.
FDA proposed changes to its feed ban in 2005, but renderers disputed FDA’s estimate as to what the regulation would cost them to dispose of specified risk material.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) earlier this year told FDA it does not anticipate problems disposing of the extra waste that would be created if FDA were to ban certain high-risk cattle parts from all animal feed. But renderers say EPA’s stance does not explain what farmers are supposed to do with the dead stock that many renderers are expected to stop picking up.
FDA estimated the feed industry would lose $16 million a year from increased costs and lost revenues. Informa Economics, which conducted a survey for the National Renderers Association (NRA), figured the financial hit at $150 million each year, almost $130 million of which would be due to the loss of existing channels for dead cattle and calf processing.
FDA agreed that it needed to do its economic assessment again.
In February 2007, an FDA spokesperson said the revised analysis was finished that takes the Informa survey into consideration. At that time, FDA staff had finished writing the feed ban final rule, and it was in the clearance process.
The NRA will be evaluating its options at OMB since there is a period of time for OMB to take up the issue. OMB is the agency that applies benefit/cost evaluation to regulations.
December 2007 Render