You Are What They Eat

Humans are at the top of the food chain. As a result, we're vulnerable to pathogens, drugs, and contaminants consumed by the animals we eat. And we eat a lot: an average of 137 pounds of beef, chicken, fish, and shellfish per American in 2002, the latest year for which figures are available.

Food animals used to eat what grew naturally--grass and grain for cows and chickens; small fish or other sea life for big fish. But life on today's farm--often a 30,000-cow feedlot or a 60,000-chicken coop--isn't so simple. The need of such facilities for huge quantities of high-protein rations and the need for slaughterhouses to find a cheap, safe way to dispose of waste gave rise to a marriage of convenience between renderers and food producers, and to the inclusion of animal by-products in animal feed.

The pairing was seen as a boon: Waste was recycled into needed protein and other nutrients for animals. But the addition of the rendering industry to the animal-feed mix has meant more trouble controlling and monitoring feed production, more vulnerability to problems, and another layer of regulation.

CR Quick Take
Cows, chickens, and fish are given feed and drugs that raise concerns about whether our food supply is as safe as possible. The Government Accountability Office, the congressional watchdog, has called the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's data on inspections of animal-feed producers “severely flawed.” Yet federal food-safety agencies have failed to tighten regulations.

Cattle: From August 1997 through March 2004, 52 companies recalled 410 feed products for violating federal rules protecting feed from infectious prions, proteins believed to cause mad cow disease. But in July 2004, the FDA delayed tightening a ban on risky feed ingredients. See Beef: Delays in mad cow protection.

Chicken: We found low levels of arsenic--present in a drug given to many chickens in part to boost growth--in livers of conventionally raised chicken, but none in certified organic chicken livers. See Chicken: Arsenic and antibiotics.

Fish: Studies report higher levels of dioxins and PCBs in farmed salmon than in wild. The probable cause: feed made of fish from polluted waters. See Seafood: Farmed vs. wild.
To assess the safety of the nation's animal feed and implications for consumers, we interviewed feed-industry experts and critics; reviewed recent research and spoke to scientists who conducted it; and tested chicken for arsenic, an approved additive in an antiparasitic drug given to many healthy birds to make them grow faster.

We asked feed-company executives to talk with us, but only representatives of fish-feed makers and the heads of four feed trade associations were willing.

Our investigation raises concerns that the federal government isn't doing enough to protect the feed supply and that as a result, the food we eat may not be as safe as it could be: Regulatory loopholes could allow mad cow infection, if present, to make its way into cattle feed; drugs used in chickens could raise human exposure to arsenic or antibiotic-resistant bacteria; farmed fish could harbor PCBs and dioxins.
what they eat, and why

Cattle and chickens are still given plant-based feed: Corn (for carbs) and soybean meal (for amino acids) make up 70 percent to 90 percent of most commercial animal feed. But the remaining 10 percent to 30 percent of feed can differ radically from what cows and poultry would eat in their natural habitat.

Processed feathers are an acceptable source of protein in cattle feed, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, as is poultry litter--floor wastes from coops, including feces. Plastic pellets are permitted as roughage. Chickens can be fed meat and bone meal. And in addition to their main diet of fish meal and fish oil, farmed fish may be given rendered meat, bone, and feather meal. The goal: to fatten animals as fast and as cheaply as possible.

Also included in feed: medications, given routinely even to healthy cattle and chickens to boost growth and keep infections at bay. (It's illegal for U.S. fish farmers to use drugs for those purposes.)

Whatever the animal, a range of feeds is available. In the U.S. alone, 14,000-plus companies sell as many as 200 basic feeds, plus custom-made mixes. In all, the companies produce more than 308 billion pounds of animal feed annually.

The relative percentage of feed ingredients varies with price and availability. “Last April, soybeans cost twice as much as they did the year before, and feed suppliers turned more aggressively to rendered animal protein and by-products,” says Chris Hurt, Ph.D., an agricultural economist at Purdue University. ”In October, soybean prices were back to previous levels, which gives them less incentive to use meat and bone meal.”

When a feed producer proposes a new ingredient, it must petition the FDA to approve it. The FDA gives a thumbs-up or thumbs-down or, in rare cases, leaves the decision to the states. Once an ingredient is approved, its name and description appear in an ingredient list published by the Association of American Feed Control Officials. AAFCO comprises FDA officials, state feed officials, and feed-industry representatives (who can't vote on matters such as requiring product labeling).

The FDA can't blanket the country with inspectors, so it delegates much enforcement responsibility to the states, which conduct 70 percent of feed-company and renderer inspections.
the benefits, the risks

 Does animal feed put
people at risk?
NO

WHO David Bossman, recent president and CEO of the American Feed Industry Association

He said “The food supply as it comes from the production source is very, very safe. We've seen that from all sources. And you can eat meat with confidence that not only is it safe, but it's getting safer because of all the things that industry is doing.”

YES

WHO Carol Tucker-Foreman, director of the Food Policy Insti-tute at the Consumer Federation of America

She said “Rules protecting the feed supply aren't as strong as they should be, and FDA enforcement has been more wishful thinking than reality. Contaminated animal feed can result in contaminated food, putting the public health at risk.”

Bossman photo by Cade Martin
Try to put aside any squeamishness when “waste” and “feed” are used in the same sentence. The waste is processed until it bears no resemblance to its former self. Thomas Cook, president of the National Renderers Association, told us that after the rendering process thoroughly heats, presses, and grinds animal tissue, it “looks like a pile of brown sugar.”

The benefits. ”Animal-protein products, meat and bone meal, and blood meal are very nutritional feed ingredients,” says David Fairfield, director of feed services for the National Grain and Feed Association. Philip Petry, president of AAFCO, speaks of the merits of chicken waste. “There's a yuck factor because it doesn't sound at all appetizing,” he says, “but the nitrogen level in poultry litter is real high, so they get a real good protein jump out of that.”

Richard Sellers, vice president for feed control and nutrition at the American Feed Industry Association (AFIA), points out that some of the 50 million tons of animal and plant by-products generated by the food industry might have ended up in landfills. “We turn them into valuable sources of protein to feed a hungry world,” he adds.

The risks. What the feed officials say is true, but what consumers need to know is whether those processed feed ingredients pose risks to them.

Industry officials cite the approval process. “All the feed ingredients are approved by the government,” says David Bossman, recent president and chief executive of AFIA. “FDA is part of that process. It's the most scientifically sound food-safety organization in the world.“

Yet even Bossman acknowledges that accidents can happen: Feed can become contaminated, for instance, simply by being stored in the wrong bin. “People make honest mistakes,” he says.

Indeed. According to a recent report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “There is considerable potential for contaminated animal feed or animal-feed ingredients to move between and within countries. This could result in the widespread and rapid dissemination of a pathogen to geographically dispersed animal herds--and, in turn, to a range of human food products.”

Jean Halloran, director of the Consumer Policy Institute of Consumers Union (publisher of Consumer Reports), thinks the FDA's rules are not stringent enough. “There needs to be rigorous analysis of the health impact of what's fed to food animals,” she says.

Other consumer advocates agree. Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, notes, “I think the yuck factor is huge. But we have actual concerns when things like clay are mixed in and other by-products that can increase the exposure of humans who eat those animals to toxic chemicals.” Clay can be contaminated with dioxins; in fiscal year 2003, dioxin contamination led the FDA to recall 479 feed products from 17 companies.

Robert Lawrence, M.D., chairman of a National Academy of Sciences committee that recently examined dioxin exposure, says that dioxins and PCBs, which accumulate in animal fat, are being recycled into the food supply. “I was shocked to learn that every year in the U.S., 11 billion pounds of animal fat is recycled into animal feed,” he says.

Even if rendered material starts out clean, it can become contaminated with bacteria. Whether that happens during processing, storage, handling, or shipping isn't clear. But tests by the Animal Protein Producers Industry, a nonprofit renderers group, found salmonella in about one-fourth of rendered feedstuffs, on average, from 1996 through 2000. The good news: That's down from about half in 1990.

The FDA is aware of only a handful of incidents worldwide in which salmonella infections in humans were linked to animal feed. The most recent was in the U.S. in 2003. But connecting human illness to contaminated feed is difficult, says Fred Angulo, chief of the CDC's foodborne and diarrheal diseases branch.

It would help to have a “farm to fork” surveillance system such as those in Europe, he says, where contamination is looked for in feed, animals, the marketplace, and humans. In the U.S., Angulo says, that might mean requiring a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) system for feed processing, like those already in place for animal processing. It would make feed manufacturers spell out where contamination might occur during processing, then build in procedures to prevent it.

Stephen Sundlof, Ph.D., director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, which regulates drugs, devices, and food additives for food animals, says the agency is “engaged in discussions with the feed industry” to put a HACCP-like system in place. An FDA spokeswoman called the system a priority, but it may not be fully implemented until 2007. AFIA has launched a voluntary system that incorporates HACCP-like measures.

If all animals were raised organically--on feed lacking pesticides, animal by-products, and antibiotics--would our food supply be safer? Yes, in some ways. There would be less risk of mad cow disease, little or no arsenic in chicken, and fewer bacteria able to resist antibiotics. But there's no guarantee that organic feed is free of garden-variety bacteria, including salmonella.

Richard Sellers of AFIA sees another roadblock, at least for now: “There are not enough organic-grain suppliers to go all organic.” Currently, about a dozen brands each of organic chicken and beef are sold, and far fewer organic fish (many are imports; USDA organic standards don't yet apply to seafood).

On the other hand, price might not be a big barrier. If the organic-feed industry grew, Chris Hurt, the Purdue economist, estimates that organic beef or chicken might cost only 10 percent to 20 percent more per pound, on average, than meat from conventionally raised animals.

American consumers are willing to pay more for greater safety guarantees, according to a national online survey of 1,085 adults conducted in January 2004 by Consumers Union. Of the 95 percent of respondents who said they eat beef, 77 percent said they would pay more at the supermarket for beef certified as free of mad cow disease.

You Are What They Eat

Thersa Sharp

2005-04-22