Meat possibly back on menu of farm animals

Meat could once again be fed to animals under plans to relax rules introduced to prevent the transmission of BSE.

The European Commission has published proposals to reduce the cost of guarding against BSE and its human form, new variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, which has claimed the lives of more than 200 people of which 169 in the United Kingdom alone.

In a consultation document, Brussels said any changes would be based on sound science but acknowledged it was “impossible” to remove all risk of the disease entering the food chain.

Since 1986, 181,114 cattle have been confirmed with BSE, resulting in the culling of four million cattle, but in recent years it has been in sharp decline.

Other diseases more threatening
The European Commission said it wished to downgrade rules because of the disease’s decline, and so it could concentrate on other conditions such as a salmonella and antimicrobial resistance that posed a greater threat to human health.

Among the proposals floated by Brussels include relaxing a wide ban on the feeding of meat and bone meal (MBM) to animals and ending the requirement for mass slaughter in herds with infected cows.

The plans are set out in a document circulated to EU states, TSE Roadmap 2 – named after Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies, the group of brain diseases that includes bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

Although tentative, an end to the feed ban could be controversial because feed was the source of the crisis: cattle contracted BSE after consuming infected proteins from sheep that had died of a related disease, scrapie.

In the EU a ban on feeding MBM to cattle, sheep and goats exists since 1994. The EU later banned the feeding to farm animals of proteins from almost all animals with the exception of fish.

Tolerable level
In TSE Roadmap 2, the EC said it was awaiting new scientific advice on a tolerable level of animal proteins in feed from the European Food Safety Authority later this year.

The EC said it might then be possible to feed MBM from non-ruminants such as pigs and chickens to other non-ruminants. As such, MBM from pigs could be fed to poultry and vice versa.

“Considering that the transmission risk of BSE from non-ruminants to non-ruminants is very unlikely, a lifting of the ban on the use of Processed Animal Protein from non-ruminants in non-ruminant feed could be considered, but without lifting the existing prohibition on intraspecies recycling,” the EC said.

It added that the reintroduction of animal feed would reduce the EU’s dependence on other sources of proteins.

Specified risk material
Also under discussion is whether the “specified risk material” (SRM) such as brain, skull and spinal cord should continue to be removed from animals before they enter the food chain.

Any such change “should be based on new evolving scientific knowledge while maintaining the existing high level of consumer protection”, the EC said.

It added: “However, the list of SRM to be removed from the food and feed chains should also take into account the epidemiological situation based on the data gained from BSE surveillance.”

The European Commission said the prevention of risk should be maintained or increased under the changes. It added: “It is impossible, however, to consider the complete elimination of risk as a realistic objective for any risk management decision in matters regarding food safety, where the cost and benefits of risk-reducing measures have to be carefully weighed in order to ensure the measure’s proportionality.”