Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy - Practices in The United States Relating To BSE

Practices in The United States Relating To BSE

Soybean meal is cheap and plentiful in the United States. The 1.5 million tons of cottonseed meal produced in the U.S. every year that is not suitable for humans or any other simple-stomach animal is even cheaper than soybean meal. Historically, meat and bone meal, blood meal and meat scraps have almost always commanded a higher price as a feed additive than oilseed meals in the U.S., so there was not much incentive to use animal products to feed ruminants. As a result, the use of animal byproduct feeds was never common, as it was in Europe. However, U.S. regulations only partially prohibit the use of animal byproducts in feed. In 1997, regulations prohibited the feeding of mammalian byproducts to ruminants such as cattle and goats. However, the byproducts of ruminants can still be legally fed to pets or other livestock, including pigs and poultry, such as chickens. In addition, it is legal for ruminants to be fed byproducts from some of these animals. A proposal to end the use of cattle blood, restaurant scraps, and poultry litter (fecal matter, feathers) in January 2004 has yet to be implemented.

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