SOURCE:
Organic Consumers Association
Nibbles and bits of cats, dogs, and sick cows
July 18, 2003 The Toronto Star by Dana Flavelle
Ann Martin wasn't shocked to learn the remains of an Alberta cow infected with mad cow disease ended up in pet food dishes across Canada and the United States.
The author and animal rights advocate has been warning for years that consumers know far too little about the unsavoury side of North America's multi-billion-dollar-a-year pet food industry.
"I wasn't surprised at all," said Martin, author of Food Pets Die For and Protect Your Pets (published by NewSage Press). "I've said for the last 10 years it (mad cow disease) would not only get into pet food but human food eventually."
Canada's pet food manufacturers say very little, if any, of the cow's remains got into the pet food system.
"It was a very small rendering facility in northern Alberta," said Marty Smart Wilder, executive director of the Pet Food Association of Canada. "Pet food would be a very small percentage of their business. The potential would be really low."
But a closer look at how the infected cow in Alberta ended up in a system that supplies the pet food industry illustrates the issues are far from cut and dried.
Since the first outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in Britain in 1985, governments on both sides of the ocean have tightened controls on what can be fed to cattle.
But in North America, animals with BSE can still be served to the family pet, as the recent case in Alberta clearly demonstrated.
An advisory from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on May 27 said material from the plant where the Alberta cow was slaughtered "may" have contained infected remains.
It had been made into several different varieties of dry dog food that had been distributed on both sides of the border, the CFIA advisory said.
Just one pet food company was involved and the advisory was almost buried under an avalanche of breaking news about the widening search for the source of the illness.
There are no documented cases of dogs catching BSE from eating tainted pet food, the advisory stressed, nor were humans at risk from handling the stuff.
The same can't necessarily be said about cats.
At the height of the BSE outbreak in Britain, 76 cats died of the feline form of mad cow disease and there's precious little agreement as to how they contracted it.
Pet advocates such as Martin maintain the cats got it from eating commercially prepared pet food. The North American pet food industry denies that's the case.
"There's absolutely no link between the feline version of BSE and commercial pet food," Smart Wilder said.
Still another version suggests changes in the production processes used in rendering plants in Britain at the time were a contributing factor.
"It's not clear whether it was transmitted as a result of eating processed pet food or raw products," says Dr. Glenn Brown, an adviser to the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts.
Mad cow disease is frightening because there is no vaccine and no known treatment for the fatal brain-wasting illness.
No one is sure what causes it, but there's general agreement it's spread by eating food made from diseased animals. There is no easy lab test for it, either. The only way to find out whether a bag of feed poses a health risk is to feed it to a laboratory mouse, wait about three months for the disease to incubate, then kill the mouse and examine its brain for the presence of the antibodies, say animal experts.
The Alberta cow's story is by now well known. Raised on a farm in northern Alberta, it was sent for slaughter last January but was diverted to a rendering plant after being diagnosed with pneumonia. Diseased animals can't be served to humans.
At the rendering plant, its remains were processed and mixed in with other material that was shipped out to eight feed mills, three farms and two pet food companies during a two-month period after the infected cow was slaughtered.
One of them was Champion Pet Food International, based in Morinville, Alta., according to the CFIA, which investigated how the cow became infected and where its remains went.
It did not end up in the human food chain, officials said.
Champion used the rendered material in a dry dog food product it manufacturers for a U.S. distributor, Pet Pantry International, of Carson City, Nev. Champion also used the material in four of its own dog kibble products sold mainly in western Canada under the brand names Yukon Gold 30/20 Mushers Mix, Champs Choice Deluxe, Masterfeeds Sportsman and Brown Bag Dog Food.
Very few of Champion's premium brands, which are sold in Canada under the name Acana, would even contain rendered beef as an ingredient, said Peter Muhlenfeld, the company's spokesman. Since the BSE scare in Alberta, Champion has moved to eliminate rendered beef from all of its products, including the lower-priced product sold through grocery stores, he said.
Rendered meat is the weak link in the mad cow pet food chain, according to animal advocate Martin. Her research over the past 10 years has found that everything from road kill to euthanized pets have joined the slaughterhouse rejects and supermarket meat counter leftovers that go into the renderers' vats.
In Canada, reputable pet food companies submit to voluntary standards that prohibit the use of pets in rendered material, said Steffani MacDonald, a spokesperson for the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association, which runs a voluntary seal of approval program. "It's in the contract they sign with us. They just wouldn't do it because it would harm their reputation."
But no one tests pet food for the presence of dog or cat DNA, she admitted.
The National Renderers Association in the U.S., which counts Canadian rendering companies amoung its members, describes itself as the original recycling business because it converts animal carcasses, which could become hazardous waste, into useful material.
To render means to separate fat from meat by cooking at high temperatures. Originally, the industry focused on selling animal fats for soaps, cosmetics and candles.
More recently, renderers discovered that when the water is also extracted, they're left with a valuable high-quality protein powder, which can be sold as a supplement to pet food and animal feed manufacturers.
Every year it recyclesmore than 56 billion pounds of perishable material.
On pet food packaging, it's identified as "meat meal" or "meat and bone meal." Virtually every major manufacturer in Canada lists it in at least some of its brands, including those that position themselves as premium products, such as IAMS and Science Diet.
The pet food industry's Smart Wilder says consumers have nothing to fear from "meat meal" ingredients in pet food.
"It's such a minuscule amount, it's really not a concern. It's far riskier for people to start tinkering on their own with pet food. Their nutritional needs are so complex."
But the veterinary association's Brown says the definition of what can go into meat meal is so broad, it can include things like central nervous system tissue, which is where BSE resides, Brown noted.
"I'm not saying you should avoid these things. I'm saying if it's a concern to you that's how to avoid it," says Brown.
The definition of meat meal is so broad it can include things like central nervous system tissue
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