Concern that the U.S. could be caught in the same grip as the European continent is currently facing with the outbreak and spread of “mad cow” disease, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has called attention to the fact a large numbers of companies involved in manufacturing animal feed are not complying with regulations meant to prevent the emergence of the dreaded disease.
Much more needs to be done to ensure that “mad cow” disease does not arise in this country, Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine at the FDA, emphasized to the New York Times Sandra Blakeslee. However, Dr. Sundlof sought to assure that the widespread failure of companies to follow the regulations, adopted in August 1997, does not mean that the American food supply is unsafe.
FDA regulations mandate that feed manufacturers and companies that render slaughtered animals into useful products generally may not feed mammals to cud-chewing animals, or ruminants, which can carry mad cow disease. Manufacturers must also have a system to prevent ruminant products from being commingled with other rendered material like that from chicken, fish or pork and all companies must keep records of where their products originated and where they were sold.
Recently released results Blakeslee reports, however, demonstrate that more than three years after the imposition of the regulations different segments of the feed industry show varying levels of compliance.
Among 180 large companies that render cattle and another ruminant, sheep, nearly a quarter were not properly labeling their products and did not have a system to prevent commingling, the F.D.A. said. In addition, among 347 F.D.A.-licensed feed mills that handle ruminant materials --- those companies which tend to be large operators that mix drugs into their products --- 20% were not using labels with the required caution statement, and 25% did not have a system to prevent commingling.
With these results from feed-mill inspections, the FDA warns that companies could face seizures, shutdowns, even prosecution if they continue to violate rules meant to keep American livestock from eating slaughtered-animal parts linked to the deadly brain disease. Many companies in violation already have received warning letters, and some feed has been recalled.
Europe's mad-cow crisis "is not a result of them not having adequate regulations in place --- it was a problem of enforcement. And we don't want to end up like that," Sundlof pointed out while promising more intense inspections.
Fear over mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, came in the mid-1990s when Great Britain discovered a new version of the human Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease was apparently being caused by eating infected beef. Some 80 people have died of the new CJD disease in Britain since then, and now France, Germany and other European countries are discovering infected livestock. Such animals acquire the disease by eating the tissue of other infected animals, and British cows are thought first to have been infected by eating feed made from sheep harboring a similar illness.
U.S. scientists believe that better methods for testing cattle are needed and that many questions remain about the disease's origin, cause and transmission. Current tests are considered too slow and they can only be done on dead cattle.
The FDA has listed "mad cow" and related diseases among its top research priorities for food safety. "We still don't know what's behind this disease," said Bernard Schwetz, the FDA's acting deputy commissioner.
Despite the increasing wariness and unknowns about "mad cow" disease, U.S. regulators continue to allow the livestock industry to feed massive amounts of antibiotics to healthy animals to spur growth and to permit chickens and hogs to be raised under factory farm conditions in which diseases can quickly spread.
This practice, according to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, "can substantially reduce the efficacy of the human antimicrobial arsenal" by helping create resistant organisms that then render the drugs useless in fighting potentially devastating human diseases. Dr. Charles Benbrook, an author of the report, said the practice may increase industry profits but "it puts everyone's health at risk."
REVISITING ADM’S CORN GLUTTEN FEED SCANDAL
RAISES “MAD COW” DISEASE FEED QUESTIONS
In light of the recent Food and Drug Administration’s report that a large numbers of companies involved in manufacturing animal feed are not complying with regulations meant to prevent the emergence of the dreaded “mad cow” disease a little noticed story that emerged during the Archer Daniels Midland lysine price-fixing scandal takes on added significance.
When Mark Whitacre, who served as a corporate mole for the FBI and brought the Department of Justice’s attention to the scandal, was interviewed by FBI agents Michael D. Bassett and Anthony P. D’Angelo in a September 5, 1999 meeting, following the Department’s procedure the agents prepared an FBI-302 dictated the following day and transcribed on September 7, totaling 16 pages. On page 15 the agents wrote:
“Whitacre advised that ADM has illegally disposed of genetic organisms by adding the organisms to corn glutten feed. The organisms are in liquid form and are sprayed on the corn glutten feed rather than disposed of as required by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The liquid spray also added weight to the feed. Whitacre advised that Jerry Weigel and Jim Randall oversee this activity.” Weigel was ADM’s head nutritionist at ADM Biochem and Randall was the corporate president and overseer of plant process and operations.
No action, however, has been taken on Whitacre’s revelation. In an October 15, 1999 letter from David Hoech, founder of the ADM Stockholder’s Watch Committee, to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, the company stockholder activist expresses shock that the Department of Justice had chosen “to overlook” such activities “leaving the Andreas crime boss, Dwayne [Dwayne O. Andreas, the then CEO and chairman of ADM’s board], intact to continue to destroy American agriculture.”
“The creed of greed of the Andreas crime family,” Hoech charged, “found it more economical to export the poisonous waste rather than build a treatment facility.”
Hoech called Reno’s attention to the remarks of a
French farmer Philippe Huesele, a member of the Agro-Brie-Champagne farmer’s
cooperative in northeastern France. On a summer tour of the Central Illinois
farm belt
Huesele remarked that the European public still equates traditional farming
practices with quality, largely because of “mad cow” disease among British
cattle herds several years ago. The Europeans blame American feed for the
disease, he said. They mistrust large corporations.
It was the British scientists who isolated animal feed contaminated with meat and bone meal from cattle and other slaughtered animals as the probable cause for BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathies or “mad cow” disease) and hypothesized that humans who ate contaminated meat had contracted the fatal CJD (Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease --- BSE’s human equivalent).
“As a shareholder and American citizen,” Hoech’s letter continues, “I demand to know why the public safety is compromised to protect the Andreas crime family. Our overseas’ customers don’t trust our regulatory departments in this administration and most of all don’t trust the Justice Department who lets corporate criminals such as ADM run amok destroying what took our ancestors decades to build.”
“Do we know that ADM feed shipped to Europe
caused the `mad-cow’ disease?” the letter asks. “No, we don’t, but the
Europeans said it was
caused by feed containing a prion. The genetic organisms mixed with the feed is
a dead protein which is a prion that was found in all the feed which the
diseased cows consumed.”
A prion (pronounced PREE-on) is a deformed protein identified by biologist Stanley Prusiner as the likely infectious agent responsible for causing and transmitting transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (BSE) . The word “prion” is a hybrid of “protein” and “infectious.”
In a subsequent law suit filed by a Missouri farmer Rodger Moberly and several other Missouri cattlemen the focus was on a substance known as free gossypol, which is derived from crushing cottonseed and used in ADM’s animal feed known as 39% Protein Quanah Special. As Nicholas E. Hollis, President of the Agribusiness Council (ABC) explains, “free gossypol can be toxic to calves and even larger cattle if ingested in sufficient qualities. Often gossypol sickens an animal slowing down its ability to gain weight.”
The plaintiff’s claims were enhanced by an affidavit from Whitacre, ADM’s former head of its BioProducts Division, who stated that ADM knew about free gossypol’s effects and intentionally sold it to enhance profits. The affidavit also repeated the charge concerning ADM’s spraying biomass residues on its corn glutten feed.
Knowing that these charges would constitute serious fraud if proven the plaintiff’s lawyers were prepared to depose CEO Andreas, his son Michael and James Randall, who was the company’s president. In ADM’s lysine price fixing case the government granted immunity to both Dwayne Andreas and Randall. In the Missouri suit ADM, however, decided to avoid such a confrontation and settled out of court, offering the plaintiff $105,000 --- roughly double the amount initially requested.
Interestingly in the preparing of the Missouri case ADM called upon experts from the nearby University of Illinois to challenge the plaintiffs veterinarians who had treated the dying animals. As Hollis points out, ADM over the years had funneled millions of dollars in grants to the university’s College of Agriculture.
“Truth can be difficult to tease out strand by strand in these cases,” Hollis adds, “but ADM’s credibility plunged when its top nutritionist `Dr.’ Gerrald Weigel , lied about his academic credentials under oath --- he had no Ph. D.”
Oklahoma State University toxicologist Dr. Sandra Morgan has noted concern for gossypol as a potential sterility agent in an article which also states “there is concern for the effects of gossypol on humans because gossypol is a biologically active compound and because gossypol in the food chain may ultimately lead to its consumption by humans.”
“If we are to regain confidence in the overwhelming majority of our food companies and their honest suppliers,” Hollis adds, “isn’t it time we stop ignoring the lessons of Moberly v. ADM and get the truth out about the Supermarkup to the World?”
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