The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is publishing additional rules that propose to broaden the livestock feed ban by removing ruminant specified risk materials from all animal feed rations.
First proposed last July, full details will be published later this fall.
The new rules could become law early next year.
An international committee evaluating the Canadian BSE situation recommended a broader ban as a further safeguard against spreading BSE in the national herd.
Industry groups have mixed reactions to the proposal.
The Canadian Meat Council representing packers and processors is unsure about costs and logistics of separating risky material, such as brain and spinal cord tissue, thought to carry transmissible encephalopathies.
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“Depending on what final rules the Canadian Food Inspection Agency puts in place, then the question will remain how to dispose of the materials,” said council spokesperson Jim Laws. “There is some cost analysis being done and all our members are not necessarily in agreement with what those figures say.”
The agency is aware of the disposal problem, said CFIA feed program co-ordinator Sergio Tulluso.
“We’re trying to co-ordinate federally and provincially where every jurisdiction has a plan to deal with this material as waste,” he said.
Barry Glotman, president of West Coast Reductions, sees this proposal as expensive for renderers and smaller abattoirs that pay five cents a pound to have material hauled away.
“The SRM material is going to be very expensive…it will have a negative value,” he said.
Removing all SRMs from the feed system prevents cross contamination in which supplements intended for poultry or swine might end up in cattle feed. His company already designates separate plants to render single species. He said feed mills should do the same rather than searching for designated landfills to accept rendered SRMs.
“They should allow it to be fed but make sure they permit it and only sell it to people who are single species (feed manufacturers),” he said.
The Animal Nutrition Association of Canada, representing feed mills and manufacturers, said it supports the removal of SRMs from animal rations, with provisos.
“This is an initiative that sounds very easy to implement and it’s not,” said association spokesperson Kathleen Sullivan.
Removing the material before it gets to the mill is the best guard against cross contamination.
“As long as there are SRMs floating through the system, there is always the risk they will inadvertently get fed back to cows,” she said.
Dedicating feed mills or production lines to single species may not be an option because of cost.
“It would probably be cheaper to stop using meat and bone meal altogether,” she said.
In addition, she said stricter controls are needed at the farm level where mix-ups are more likely to occur.
Now, spinal cords, vertebral columns, brains and small intestines are removed from all cattle, while eyes, nerve tissue and some glands are also removed from animals older than 30 months when slaughtered for human consumption.
The material is rendered into meal and is used for protein supplements for non-ruminant livestock like poultry and swine, as well as for fertilizer and other industrial uses.
The new rules suggest banning carcasses of dead and downer cattle from all animal feed, but some muscle meats could be allowed for pet food.
Segregating SRMs at slaughter or during further processing may be required. Special equipment or facilities may be required to remove, store, handle and distribute it. Processors may have to identify the material with markers, stains, tracers or other means.
No material derived from ruminants has been allowed into the cattle and sheep feed mix since 1997.
Proteins derived from hogs and horses, as well as milk, gelatin and blood products from all species, are still permitted, although the new rules may ban these materials as well.
