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Natural-Beef (buynaturalbeef.us) …item 3..Stop Feeding Cows Chicken Manure (Posted: 04/26/2012 8:52 am) …


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Because poultry litter can be as much as eight times cheaper than foodstuffs like alfalfa, the U.S. cattle industry may feed as much as a million pounds of poultry litter to cattle each year.

A thousand chickens can make enough waste to feed a growing calf year-round. Although excrement from other species is fed to livestock in the United States, chicken droppings are considered more nutritious for cows than pig feces or cattle dung.

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…..item 1)…. Bloomberg News … www.bloomberg.com/news … Mad Cow Is Reason to Change Rules, Not Swear Off Beef

By the Editors May 9, 2012 7:00 PM ET

www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-09/mad-cow-is-reason-to-ch…

The discovery last month of a case of mad-cow disease in California could be taken as good news.

The cow in question was found at a rendering plant, where spent animals are sent for processing into leather, soap, cosmetics and pet food. Tests detected the illness before slaughter. There was never any chance that meat from the cow would enter the human food chain. Cattle futures prices, which initially plunged, are higher now than before the announcement.

Agriculture officials say the animal was infected with an unusual form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, the formal name for mad-cow disease, which they believe occurred spontaneously. It wasn’t, we were assured, the result of giving cows feed containing cattle brain and spinal-cord tissue, the route that infected herds throughout the U.K. in the 1990s. (People who eat meat from an infected cow can contract variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a fatal neurodegenerative condition.) The practice of mixing used organs and slaughterhouse scraps into cattle feed has since been banned in the U.S. and many other countries. It is one reason episodes of mad-cow disease now are so rare.

There may never be a satisfactory answer to how the California cow was infected. Yet the case is a reminder that the U.S. food safety system is in need of improvement, not just to prevent mad-cow disease, but to curtail outbreaks of food-borne illnesses that sicken 48 million Americans a year and lead to 3,000 deaths.

—–Cheap Feed

The federal government could start by ending the practice of feeding cows what’s euphemistically called poultry litter. Poultry litter is the spilled food, feathers, excrement, carcasses and bedding material that accumulates on the floors of commercial chicken barns. This material is far cheaper than corn, alfalfa or other feeds that have soared in price in recent years, and farmers use a lot of it — 2 billion pounds a year by some estimates.

Because chickens aren’t susceptible to mad-cow disease, poultry farmers are allowed to use feed that includes certain cattle byproducts. In other words, cows can still end up eating feed containing cattle-waste products via poultry litter. The European Commission has banned feeding all forms of processed animal protein to farm animals. The U.S. should do the same.

The U.S. also needs a better system for tracking cattle. Agriculture Department officials initially had trouble locating the California cow’s offspring. (The one they found tested negative.)

The process shouldn’t have been difficult. Many countries – - including less-developed ones like Botswana — tag all cattle, either with plastic ear markers or microchips under the skin. Information gathered from tagging can be stored in a national database and used to log veterinary records, exposure to disease and transport history.

The U.S. had promised a tagging program back in 2003, but it was never put into effect amid objections by the cattle industry over costs. An Agriculture Department study last year estimated the expense at between .5 million and .3 million, assuming it applied only to animals shipped between states.

That’s a relatively small sum compared with the billion in revenue generated in 2009 by the cattle industry; an outbreak of mad cow disease, of course, would come with its own public health costs.

A plan was sent to the White House for review after the California mad-cow discovery that would limit tagging to animals for interstate transport. The ranching industry supports this proposal. But any program should include all cattle. The sick cow in California never left the state and might have been exempt from tagging under the latest plan.

—–Slipping Through

The U.S. needs a more efficient overall inspection regimen. Of the 35 million cattle slaughtered each year, only 40,000 — much less than 0.1 percent — are tested. This low rate raises the possibility that some diseased animals are slipping through. What are the odds that just one cow was infected with mad-cow disease?

The Obama administration in 2009 pushed for legislation to strengthen food safety, including more inspections of production and processing operations, and two years ago Congress passed the Food Safety Modernization Act.

The rules to carry out the law were supposed to be in place at the start of the year, but have bogged down at the White House, one that’s perhaps consumed with election-year politics. The administration says it wants to get the rules right. And it’s true, business shouldn’t be overburdened with new regulations.

There is no good reason, though, for these basic steps to protect food safety to be put on hold until after Election Day.

Read more opinion online from Bloomberg View:

Today’s highlights: the View editors on India’s economic crossroads; A.A. Gill on London’s shareholder revolt; Ezra Klein on Richard Lugar’s concession speech; Noah Feldman on Israel’s new coalition; Caroline Baum on the nature of U.S. unemployment; Reid Hastie on the failure of narrative thinking; Sam Sherraden on China’s liberalization.

To contact the Bloomberg View editorial board: view@bloomberg.net.
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…..item 2)… buynaturalbeef.us … www.buynaturalbeef.us … Organic Natural Beef, Meat & Food

US Farm Using Chicken Poop (Manure) for Feeding The Cow and Cause Mad Cow
Posted on April 27, 2012 by admin

www.buynaturalbeef.us/2012/04/us-farm-using-chicken-poop-…

—–Mad Cow California: Stop Feeding Cows Chicken Manure

Cattle remains are still fed to chickens, for example, and the poultry litter (floor wastes that include the feces and spilled feed) is fed back to cows. In this way, prions — the infectious proteins that cause mad cow disease — may continue to be cycled back into cattle feed and complete the cow “cannibalism” circuit blamed for the spread of the disease.

—–Mad Cow California: Stop Weaning Calves on Cattle Blood

If you remember, Oprah swore she would never eat another burger again after hearing that cows were being fed the remains of other cattle. After she tried to remind the audience that cows were supposed to be herbivores.

Though some dairy farmers still wean calves on whole milk, the majority of producers use milk replacer, which too often contains spray-dried cattle blood as a cheap source of protein.

Prusiner won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of prions, the infectious proteins that cause mad cow disease. He was quoted in the New York Times as calling the practice of feeding cattle blood to young calves “a really stupid idea,” because it could complete the “cannibalistic” circuit blamed for the spread of the disease.

Since then, evidence that blood can be infectious has only grown, yet dairy calves in the United States are still drinking up to three cups of “red blood cell protein” concentrate every day.

—–What is Filthy Feed

Finding it hard to believe that cows eat chicken poop for breakfast? Confused about why our government allows such a risky and filthy product to be fed to animals used for food? Back in the 1960s, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – the federal agency responsible for protecting the public health – banned the use of poultry litter as cattle feed.

In 1980, however, the FDA lifted the ban and decided to let state agricultural agencies regulate it instead. This decision was made decades before outbreaks of Mad Cow Disease started to occur and long before the health risks of feeding poultry litter were fully understood. Sadly for cows across the country, the states fared worse than the FDA in reigning in this risky business. After the FDA relinquished its authority, the states did not take up the task of monitoring and regulating the ill effects of litter feeding. Currently no one is keeping an eye on the practice, so no one is aware of the many problems it is causing.

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…..item 3)…. The Huffington Post .. www.huffingtonpost.com … The Internet Newspaper:

News Blog Video Community … HUFF POST … THE BLOG

Michael Greger, M.D.Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at The Humane Society of the United States

Mad Cow California: Stop Feeding Cows Chicken Manure
Posted: 04/26/2012 8:52 am

www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-greger-md/mad-cow-disease-…

More than a decade ago, the World Health Organization called for the exclusion of the riskiest bovine tissues — cattle brains, eyes, spinal cord and intestine — from the human food supply and from all animal feed to protect against the spread of mad cow disease. Unfortunately, the United States still allows the feeding of some of these potentially risky tissues to people, pigs, pets, poultry, and fish. Cattle remains are still fed to chickens, for example, and the poultry litter (floor wastes that include the feces and spilled feed) is fed back to cows. In this way, prions — the infectious proteins that cause mad cow disease — may continue to be cycled back into cattle feed and complete the cow "cannibalism" circuit blamed for the spread of the disease.

Because poultry litter can be as much as eight times cheaper than foodstuffs like alfalfa, the U.S. cattle industry may feed as much as a million pounds of poultry litter to cattle each year. A thousand chickens can make enough waste to feed a growing calf year-round. Although excrement from other species is fed to livestock in the United States, chicken droppings are considered more nutritious for cows than pig feces or cattle dung.

A single cow can eat as much as three tons of poultry waste a year, yet the manure does not seem to affect the taste of the subsequent milk or meat. Taste panels have found little difference in the tenderness, juiciness, and flavor of beef made from steers fed up to 50% poultry litter. Beef from animals fed bird droppings may in fact even be more juicy and tender. Cows are typically not given feed containing more than 80% poultry litter, though, since it’s not as palatable and may not fully meet protein and energy needs.

The industry realizes that the practice of feeding chicken feces to cattle might not stand up to public scrutiny. They understand that the custom carries "certain stigmas," "presents special consumer issues," and poses "potential public relations problems." They seem puzzled as to why the public so "readily accepts organically grown vegetables" grown with composted manure, while there is "apparent reluctance on the part of the public" to accept the feeding of chicken excrement to cattle. "We hope," says one industry executive, "common sense will prevail."

The editor of Beef magazine commented, "The public sees it as ‘manure.’ We can call it what we want and argue its safety, feed value, environmental attributes, etc., but outsiders still see it simply as ‘chicken manure.’ And, the most valid and convincing scientific argument isn’t going to counteract a gag reflex." The industry’s reaction, then, has been to silence the issue.

According to Beef, public relations experts within the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association warned beef producers that discussing the issue publicly would only "bring out more adverse publicity." When the Kansas Livestock Association dared to shine the spotlight on the issue by passing a resolution urging the discontinuation of the practice, irate producers in neighboring states threatened a boycott of Kansas feedyards.

Maybe this new case of mad cow disease will reinvigorate consumer campaigns to close the "no-brainer" loopholes in feed regulations that continue to allow the feeding of such filthy feed to farm animals.

See also, part 1: Mad Cow California: Stop Feeding Calves Cattle Blood
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