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EU Urged To Keep Animal Protein Out Of Cattle Feed |
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| FRANCE: June 6, 2008 | ||
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BRUSSELS - Europe must keep its ban on mixing animal protein into cattle feed to avoid more cases of mad cow disease even though far more is now known about the disease, the EU's top food safety agency said. The EU banned the use of meat and bone meal (MBM) in cattle feed in 1994 after scientists concluded that bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease was spread by feed contaminated by ruminant protein in the form of MBM.
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"The epidemiology of the disease is better than it was five years ago but it's still something that we should control," said Catherine Geslain-Laneelle, executive director of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), by telephone from Italy. "In relation to ruminants ... definitely we need to continue to be very cautious in controlling the fact that we don't have included in feed animal proteins from other ruminants because there it is still a risk," she said. EFSA is based in the northern Italian city of Parma. In the past few years, there has been a significant decrease in the number of positive BSE cases detected in the EU, while the age of those positive cases has steadily increased. In 2001, the EU also banned processed animal protein in feed for any animals farmed for the production of food. The only exception has been using fishmeal in feed for non-ruminants. Last year, EFSA scientists examined the BSE-related public health risks of using certain animal proteins in animal feed, particularly pig protein being fed to poultry and feed containing poultry protein being fed to pigs. They concluded that the risks to human health would be negligible, since BSE had not yet been identified in pigs or poultry under natural conditions -- making the risk of BSE being transmitted to pigs by feeding them poultry-processed proteins, or vice-versa, fairly slim at most. But Geslain-Laneelle warned against complacency. "We are always very cautious," she said. "It's not necessarily because we haven't identified (BSE in pigs or poultry) that it does not exist at all." "We consider that with the surveillance system, the monitoring system, the control measures that we have put in place on BSE, it's really very unlikely that it exists. But who can say it will never appear?"
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Story by Jeremy Smith
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REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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