LITITZ, Pa. — A federal regulation aimed at preventing mad cow disease from getting into the food supply could create health risks of its own: many thousands of cattle carcasses rotting on farms, spreading germs, attracting vermin and polluting the water.
At issue is a Food and Drug Administration rule, set to take effect in April, that will prohibit the use of the brains and spinal cords of older cattle as ingredients in livestock feed and pet food.
Some of the rendering plants that grind up carcasses for use in feed have announced they will stop accepting dead cattle from farms because it would be too costly to remove the banned organs.
As a result, many farmers might bury dead cattle on their property or let them rot in the open, industry officials and regulators say.
“I think there will be some illegal disposal — animals that get dragged into the woods or into the back fields,” said Gerald F. Smith Jr., president of Winchester, Va.-based Valley Proteins Inc., which operates 12 rendering plants but will no longer remove dead cattle from farms come February.
He said the fee per animal would have to go from $85 to $200 to cover the added expense, and “I don’t think the farmers would be willing to pay.”
Farmers already routinely bury, abandon or compost millions of cattle carcasses. But the fear is that the new rule could lead farmers to put hundreds of thousands more dead animals into the ground.
According to the FDA’s own environmental assessment of the new rule, the infectious agent that carries mad cow disease may survive burial or composting.
