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The Western Producer
July 3, 2003
Animal blood use in feed worried
health department
By Barry Wilson, Ottawa bureau
More than four years ago, a team of Health Canada employees concerned about transmissible spongiform encephalopathy issues worried that Canada's 1997 ban on feeding ruminant protein to ruminants might not provide enough protection.
According to minutes of a Sept. 23, 1998 conference call among the department's team, there was discussion of a scientific study that offered evidence blood can carry the TSE-causing prion to the brain.
And they noted that the ban on feeding ruminant protein to ruminants, announced the previous year by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, did not include blood.
"This has implications insofar as the current exemption of blood in the prohibition of ruminant tissues in ruminant feed," said the minutes, acquired under access-to-information laws by Ottawa researcher Bradford Duplisea.
Later, the Health Canada officials also discussed "a potential concern" that feeding animal protein to animals, "changing herbivores into carnivores," could cause disease.
"It was generally agreed that there was evidence to support this concern," said the minutes, written Oct. 6, 1998 by Diane Kirkpatrick and Lynn Boag of the health protection branch. "It was agreed that the TSE team should document available evidence so as to open discussions on this issue with our partners, notably CFIA."
Duplisea said last week he considers this evidence that Health Canada has been raising questions about the safety of Canada's feeding practices for years.
"I would contend that if the CFIA had taken these concerns seriously and moved to remove these ingredients from the animal feed system, we might have avoided mad cow," he said. "We will never know for sure but while they talk about a spontaneous occurrence, I think there is a good chance this could have been avoided."
There is evidence in the minutes he extracted that the health department and CFIA had a different view of the issue.
"CFIA does not appear to see BSE as a human health issue," Health Canada officials wrote after an Oct. 29, 1997 meeting with CFIA. "Instead, they appear to see it as an animal health issue."
Duplisea said that attitude was part of the problem.
A senior CFIA official last week said he does not remember health officials raising those specific points.
And Claude Lavigne said in an interview June 23 that blood continues to be allowed in ruminant feed because the agency does not agree with Health Canada's 1998 concerns.
"Blood is still exempted from the ban because blood is still considered a tissue that does not carry this infection," he said.
However, questions of blood in feed and the practice of feeding animal protein to animals will be among the issues discussed as the CFIA, government and industry begin a thorough review of regulations.
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