January 9, 2004

 

 

USDA Issues New Regulations To Address Mad Cow Disease

 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service Thursday issued four new rules to implement announcements made last week by Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman to enhance safeguards against bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad-cow disease.

 

The FSIS announced the rules in a press release.

 

On Dec. 30, Veneman announced several policies that will strengthen protections against BSE, including the immediate banning of non-ambulatory (downer) animals from the human food supply. Rules to address the remaining issues are on display at the Federal Register and are the result of many months of development, the release said.

 

The policies involve requiring additional process controls for establishments using advanced meat-recovery systems, holding meat from cattle that have been tested for BSE until the negative test results are received, and prohibiting the air-injection stunning of cattle.

 

The rules released Thursday include:

• Product Holding. USDA is publishing a notice announcing that FSIS inspectors are no longer marking cattle tested for BSE as "inspected and passed" until confirmation is received that the cattle have, in fact, tested negative for BSE. FSIS will be issuing a directive to inspection-program personnel outlining this policy.
  
  
• Specified Risk Material. With the filing of an interim final rule, FSIS is declaring that skull, brain, trigeminal ganglia, eyes, vertebral column, spinal cord and dorsal root ganglia of cattle 30 months of age or older and the small intestine of all cattle are specified risk materials, thus prohibiting their use in the human food supply. Tonsils from all cattle already are considered inedible and therefore do not enter the food supply.  

These enhancements are consistent with the actions taken by Canada after the discovery of BSE there in May. These prohibitions are effective immediately upon publication in the Federal Register, the release said.

 

In this rule, FSIS is requiring federally inspected establishments that slaughter cattle to remove, segregate and dispose of specified risk materials so they cannot possibly enter the food chain.

 

To facilitate the enforcement of this rule, FSIS has developed procedures for verifying the approximate age of cattle that are slaughtered in official establishments.

 

State inspected plants must have equivalent procedures in place to prevent these specified risk materials from entering the food supply.

• Advanced Meat Recovery. AMR is a technology that removes muscle tissue from the bone of beef carcasses under high pressure without incorporating bone material. AMR product may be labeled as "meat." FSIS previously established and enforced regulations that prohibit spinal cord from being included in products labeled as "meat."  

This interim final rule expands that prohibition to include dorsal root ganglia, clusters of nerve cells connected to the spinal cord along the vertebral column in addition to spinal cord tissue. Also, because the vertebral column and skull in cattle 30 months and older will be considered inedible, they cannot be used for AMR.

• Air-Injection Stunning. To ensure that portions of the brain are not dislocated into the tissues of the carcass as a consequence of stunning cattle during the slaughter process, FSIS is issuing an interim final rule to ban the practice of air-injection stunning.  

Comments on these rules will be accepted for 90 days after their publication in the Federal Register.