Larry Frith shies away from commenting on whether tougher feed restrictions are needed to guard against further cases of BSE in Canada’s livestock industry.
The Alberta organic beef producer says he does not want to question the practices of others in the cattle industry or suggest how they should do business.
“It’s a question of whether you want to go by science or whether you want to go by public reaction. If you want to cater to every whim of the public, then you’ll want to ban everything.”
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With two more cases of BSE confirmed in Canada in recent weeks, the issue of livestock feed is under close scrutiny and could affect consumer confidence in Canadian beef at home and abroad.
Canada continues to allow the feeding of ruminant protein to non-ruminants such as pigs and poultry, but there are those who insist the restrictions should go further. The federal New Democrats are among them, and the party last week said there needs to be a full ban on using rendered cattle in any animal feed.
“I know there are those in the industry who wince when they hear that, but the stakes we’re dealing with are very high right now,” said federal NDP agriculture critic Charlie Angus.
“The average ranchers and farmers I’ve talked to are willing to incur the costs necessary to get this industry back where it belongs.”
But the measure called for by the NDP would cause “a big hit” to the value of a cattle carcass, said Kathleen Sullivan, general manager of the Animal Nutrition Association of Canada, which represents livestock feed manufacturers. More of the carcass would become waste, resulting in greater disposal costs. And it’s doubtful Canada could cope with the added waste disposal needs, she said.
Sullivan’s association instead supports regulations proposed by the federal government to remove specified risk materials, or SRMs, such as the brain, spinal cord and tonsils of ruminants, from the making of all animal feed, including that for swine and poultry. The draft regulations are now open for public comment.
“The only way to completely address the risk and address perceptions about weaknesses in our system is to remove all of these (SRM) tissues,” said Sullivan. “Anything more than that is unnecessary.”
The regulations proposed would help address the issue of cross-contamination, something that might occur, for example, if a farm with multiple species of livestock allowed hog feed containing the SRMs into its cattle rations.
However, Angus questions the ability of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to prevent cross-contamination of livestock feed without a full ban on using ruminants in livestock and poultry feed.
He said nearly 44,000 BSE infected animals were born in England after that country banned ruminant-to-ruminant feed in 1986. The ban allowed downer cattle to still be rendered for pig and chicken feed. It wasn’t until Britain implemented a full ruminant ban in 1996 that it was able to eradicate the disease, according to the federal NDP.
Canada has had a ban on the feeding of ruminants to ruminants since 1997.
The CFIA in its fiscal year ending March 31, 2004, inspected all commercial feed plants in the country, reviewing the cleaning of equipment between different feed batches, the order in which batches of feed were milled, the sources of nutrients, and feed labelling.
The agency found no evidence in the past year of people adding ruminant protein to ruminant feed in Canada, but it recognizes that a slight risk of cross-contamination exists, said CFIA spokesperson Marc Richard.
The CFIA wants the regulation of livestock feed in Canada independently reviewed by a panel of American experts. Details of that review were still being worked out, but the aim is to have it completed before March 7.
“There’s no use us telling you we’ve done a good job,” Richard said. “Let’s get an independent review by people who are in the business. We’re quite willing to submit ourselves to an independent review by experts.”
Alberta grain farmer Fred van Verlinve earns added income by transporting hog feed.
He has seen no evidence of hog feed accidentally getting mixed in cattle rations, but he’s convinced there’s a high risk of cross-contamination between feeds.
“I think the quick solution in the beef industry is to ban the use of (bovine) blood and bone meal altogether because of the risk of cross-contamination,” he said.
“If we don’t set the example, we will never get the confidence of the Americans and from our own consumers as well.”
If blood and bone meal from cattle are not completely banned from the making of livestock feed, then government should at least require that mills making cattle feed are separate from those using bovine blood and bone meal to make swine and poultry rations, van Verlinve said.
