Feed ban allows cow blood

WASHINGTON -- The formula that some farmers feed their dairy calves looks nothing like mother's milk. It's brown and is derived from cattle blood.

"Calves don't care," said Jim Quigley, an executive with an Iowa company that produces a milk substitute given to the calves of dairy cows.

Researchers and consumer advocates increasingly are focusing on animal blood as a possible source of transmission of the range of brain-wasting diseases, including mad cow.

They contend the use of these protein supplements is a risky gap in the US and Canadian bans on feeding most cattle proteins to other cattle. The bans, which went into place in 1997, are intended to prevent the spread of mad cow disease, which scientists believe is most likely transmitted through contaminated feed.

"This idea that blood can't transmit this disease is absurd," said John Stauber, coauthor of "Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?"

The diagnosis last month of a case of the brain-wasting disease in a Washington state cow has brought renewed attention to the issue. US and Canadian officials have pledged to take a renewed look at the use of cattle blood in products cattles consume.

"There has been no compelling scientific evidence that blood products pose a threat of transmitting the disease," said Sergio Tolusso, feed program coordinator for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Still, he said, with the Washington state case and the discovery of mad cow a Canadian cow in May, "We have to rethink our position and perhaps make a change."

The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates animal feed in the United States, said the agency is reevaluating its policy.

Scientists have long said it is possible blood can transmit the human version of mad cow.

In Great Britain, where mad cow first appeared in the 1980s and people began dying of the variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the mid-1990s, surgeons rely on imported blood for operations.

Last month, the British government announced that a man who died from the human form of mad cow disease may have gotten sick because of a blood transfusion. The man died six years after receiving blood from a donor who later developed the disease, the government said.

Dr. Giuseppe Legname, a professor of neurology at the University of California at San Francisco, said there is no definitive answer about the infectious nature of blood. Legname works on the research team headed by Dr. Stanley Prusiner, the Nobel laureate who discovered the prion, or misshapen protein, that carries mad cow.

Prusiner has said it is "stupid" to feed cattle blood to cattle.

Legname said, "Before we can demonstrate one way or the other, it's safer not to use it."

APC Inc. of Ames, Iowa, continues to market its milk substitute derived from cattle blood and has no plans to change, said Quigley, an APC vice president, and other executives.

In an interview, APC executives maintained there is no evidence suggesting their milk replacer is unsafe. "We continue to get the indication that the blood is a safe tissue," said Louis Russell, a vice president.