Oregon cattle
producer Glenn Caywood found out last month just how close his isolated
ranch is to the folks dining at McDonald's.
Prior to unloading
his cattle for sale, auction representatives asked him to sign an
affidavit certifying that his cattle had not been fed meat or bone meal
rendered from ruminants. It was a precaution, they told him, to document
measures to prevent an outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or
BSE, on U.S. soil.
They also said
that he might have difficulty selling his cattle if he didn't sign. Most
of the sale's buyers were under strict orders from feedlots and packers
to purchase only cattle that had been certified.
"I said, 'Sure,
I'll sign it,' " Caywood recalls. "I was glad to see them finally getting
on with it, because we sure as hell don't want any of that here."
McDonald's,
like others with huge investments in consumer confidence in their brands,
is moving to make sure that its customers aren't afraid of their beef--and
that means requiring cattle producers and suppliers to certify that the
raw product is OK.
Perhaps as a
sign of how seriously the BSE issue is being taken, the industry seems
to be going along willingly. Like Caywood, producers across the country
have either signed the affidavit, or can expect to sign it in the coming
months. Every major packer in the country now requires certification before
it purchases cattle. In the future, producers will be expected to maintain
better documentation on the feed they use in order to continue selling
cattle as they have in the past.
Beef processors
were notified in February that McDonald's would begin requiring certified
documents from all of its suppliers, including beef producers, in hopes
of having 100% of its supply certified by April 1.
In addition, the company
hopes to have "full certification by the end of the year all the way to
the farm level," says McDonald's spokesperson Walt Riker. That means just
about all producers in the country will have to verify that they have not
used the banned ruminant feeds for their cattle.
Producers also
can expect separate efforts by packers to certify that their cattle
are free of ag chemicals and pharmaceutical residues, and that labeling
requirements for withdrawal times and administration have been followed.
ConAgra Red Meat currently has just such a program in place.
It's unclear whether
McDonald's, industry or government will leverage this certification program
to require animal identification programs. Riker says his company is pleased
with the industry's responsiveness to this issue, and has no intentions
at the moment to broaden the scope of certification to include residues,
or require the ability to trace back to the farm of origin.
Animal ID--in
the absence of DNA tracing abilities probably wouldn't be very useful for
preventing BSE outbreaks or identifying where they started, anyway, say
industry experts.
"Most
of the cattle in this country are slaughtered before they're 30 months
of age, long before they'd show signs of the disease," says Burke Healey,
an Oklahoma seedstock producer who also serves on the national Beef Quality
Assurance advisory committee. "Plus, from what we know of the human form
of the disease in Europe, it takes three to five years for it to incubate.
If you came down with it tomorrow, how do you figure out what you ate when?
You can't even hypothesize it, let alone trace it back to the source."
Still, the new
rules--at least symbolically--change the landscape of beef production for
good, demonstrating clearly that producers are in the food business, not
just the cattle business. The rules also demonstrate that producers in
the future will be held accountable for the quality and safety of their
product, which may pave the way for an industry-driven ID program
as a means of protecting producers against liability problems.
"If mandatory
ID would help the industry, I would be one of the first to sign on and
do it," says Healey. "I just have some real reservations about the costs
of it and what we have to gain. I'm not sure it would help us prevent or
trace back our food safety challenges, such as E. coli O157:H7."
And McDonald's,
the planet's biggest buyer of beef, is now the 800-lb. gorilla sitting
in the marketplace; when it wants production practices changed, it gets
them changed swiftly. In recent years, it imposed far-reaching animal-welfare
standards on egg producers and packing plants as it reacted to consumer
concern over animal handling practices.
McDonald's has
been hurt by a downward spiral in European beef demand. The company said
earlier this year that concerns over BSE continue to hurt its overseas
sales.
About 25%, or
$9.29 billion, of its yearly sales come from Europe, where consumers remain
skittish about hamburgers. As a result, McDonald's saw its fourth-quarter
profits fall by 7%.
BSE was thrust
into the spotlight in the United States in January of this year when Food
and Drug Administration (FDA) officials reported that some U.S. feed-makers
had failed to comply with all the requirements of its 1997 ban on feeding
ruminant-derived meat and bone meal to cattle.
Nearly 30% of
180 rendering plants, the FDA said, had no system for preventing feed mix-ups,
and 16% didn't comply with labeling requirements.
That same month,
nearly 1,200 Texas cattle were pulled off the market after they ate animal
feed containing the banned ingredients.
Within a few
weeks of the Texas crackdown, the feed industry's organizations moved to
help their members bring themselves into more strict compliance. In March,
the American Feed Industry Association and the National Renderers Association
adopted new voluntary safeguards that remove all cattle and sheep products
from plants that make cattle feed.
The groups also
established certification programs for feed makers and animal rendering
plants.
Livestock Marketing
Association also drafted certification affidavits--available on its Web
site--for members to hand out to producers who sell livestock at their
facilities. Jack Robertson, who manages the auction barn where Caywood
sold his cattle, says he has distributed several hundred affidavits already,
and only one producer has refused to sign it. "Auctions are sort
of stuck in the middle of all of this. But when the packers make the rules,
you gotta follow them," Robertson says.
The National
Cattlemen's Beef Association also developed its own certification affidavit
for use by producers, and circulated it to the industry in mid-March. "We're
supportive of producers signing the affidavits," says NCBA's Gary Weber.
"I think the industry is unanimous in wanting to prevent the disease because
it's such a universal threat to everyone in this business."
Producers who
are certified through the nationwide Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) program
should have been in compliance with the FDA feed ban since the beginning.
"This is nothing new for them," adds Gary Cowman, who heads the national
BQA program. "Producers who've been through BQA training and are familiar
with BQA guidelines already know they're not supposed to feed this stuff."
Some in the
industry see McDonald's move toward certification as merely a publicity
stunt, imposing additional cost and burden on producers, packers and processors.
It's also impossible to track on an individual animal basis because cattle
can trade hands many times before they're slaughtered. Plus, many of the
cows being processed today were alive well before the 1997 ban on ruminant
protein.
"How can beef
producers be held responsible for feeding ruminant protein before the FDA
ban was in place?" asks an industry representative on condition of anonymity.
"We're not going
to sign it," says one packer who wished to remain unnamed. "It doesn't
mean anything. It is just a publicity stunt by McDonald's. It's impractical
and impossible. And our company doesn't need their business."
True, compliance
does raise the specter of additional cost, regulation and ultimate responsibility
for all sectors of the industry. And nowhere is that more clear than
in a compliance letter drafted and distributed to suppliers by Keystone
Foods, a major supplier of McDonald's.
In it, producers
are asked to keep "good records for a minimum of one year concerning all
animal ingredients you buy and use for your cattle. For one year, keep
copies of purchase invoices and labeling of all feeds that you receive
containing animal protein products."
The letter goes
on to state that "on-farm record inspection will be performed to verify
that prohibited material has not been fed to cattle."
"Realistically,
it is the producers' responsibility to ask their feed suppliers if their
products are in compliance," says NCBA's Weber. "But, quite frankly, the
legal responsibility should be on those who sold and manufactured the feed."
--
Written By Eric Grant
Beef Today magazine,
April 2001 Edition
Reproduced with the expressed
permission of AgWeb.com, Inc.
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