- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S.
regulators are considering whether feeding chicken litter to cattle poses
any risk of transmitting the deadly mad cow disease, a top U.S. health
official said Monday.
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- Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA's Center for
Veterinary Medicine, told Reuters that practice was one of several regulators
were reviewing as they consider whether to tighten the shield against the
illness. So far, neither mad cow disease nor its deadly human form have
been found in the United States.
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- Federal rules that took effect in 1997 prohibit feeding
cattle or sheep with protein from animals that are potential carriers of
mad cow or a related illness. Feeding contaminated animal remains is blamed
for spreading the disease to cows throughout Europe. Experts believe people
get the brain-wasting illness by eating contaminated meat products.
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- Now, litter containing waste from chickens legally can
be processed and fed to cattle under some circumstances, Sundlof said.
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- Some have questioned whether chickens that ate material
prohibited for cattle could recycle the banned byproducts back to cows
that ate their litter. The abnormal proteins believed to cause mad cow
disease have proven resilient, and it is unknown whether a chicken's digestive
tract could kill them.
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- ``That's another issue we intend to put out there for
examination and potentially change our position on that ... Just about
everything is open right now,'' Sundlof said in an interview.
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- In remarks to a public meeting regarding mad cow, also
known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, Sundlof said regulators were
re-evaluating other practices now exempt from cattle feed bans.
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- One exemption under review is the feeding of ``plate
waste'' to cattle. Plate waste is food served to people in restaurants
that later is discarded. Some companies reprocess the leftovers into animal
feed.
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- ``It's another area we are continuing to look at to determine
if it is indeed a safe practice,'' Sundlof said.
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- Dr. Paul Brown, medical director for the National Institute
for Neurological Disorders and Strokes, said infected meat from a T-bone
steak, if cut from an infected animal, could pose ``a reasonably remote
possibility'' of being infectious when recycled as plate waste. The steak
might carry spinal cord tissue, which along with brain parts is considered
highly infectious.
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- Some 100 people in Europe have died from or been diagnosed
with the human version of mad cow, known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.
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