Purina Mills may have violated rules in mad cow feed ban

STEVE BRISENDINE / AP 27jan01

The quarantine of 1,000 cattle and recall of 22 tons of feed out of fears about mad cow disease may have been caused by a mill that disclosed a possible rule violation.

A Purina Mills Inc. plant may have mixed cow meat and bone meal into a feed supplement that was put on the wrong truck, said Beverly Boyd, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Agriculture.

A Purina Mills spokesman said Friday the company had begun phasing out the use of meat and bone meal from cows in any of its livestock feed. Beef byproducts are banned for cattle or sheep feed but commonly used in swine and poultry feed.

``This (quarantine) just happened to be a matter of timing. But as of last night, we are no longer using it,'' said Max Fisher, a spokesman for St. Louis-based Purina Mills, the nation's largest maker of livestock feed. ``It's a voluntary move on our behalf and takes us down to a zero risk factor for a misformulation in the future.''

The questionable feed supplement was manufactured by a Purina Mills plant in Gonzales, Texas, on the evening of Jan. 16 and recalled on Jan. 17 after a standard check revealed the mistake, Fisher said.

The company said it called the Food and Drug Administration after the error was discovered through internal controls.

Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is believed to cause variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the fatal human equivalent of mad cow disease. Some 80 Europeans have died of new variant CJD since the mid-1990s, and beef sales have plummeted on that continent.

The disease has never been found in U.S. cattle, and in its news release, Purina stressed that it only uses meat and bone meal from U.S.-grown animals and only in those products in which it is allowed.

• Purina Mills: http://www.purinamills.com/

• FDA: http://www.fda.gov/