Farmers may use animal by-products in feed again,  

Posted by Wyatt

The European Union is keen to reintroduce practices banned on farms since the 'mad cow' scandal broke.
Member of the European Parliament will vote this week on whether to lift the ban on feeding animal by-products to pigs, chickens and farmed fish. They have been urged to back the move by an influential EU committee, which called in a recent draft report for the feed ban to be revised.

Cattle feed may be protected because cows are vegetarians
Cattle feed may be protected because cows are vegetarians
The document, from the European Parliament's Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, stops short of altering the status quo on cattle feed, pointing out that because cows are vegetarian they should not be fed so-called "processed animal proteins" 
The potential U-turn comes as concerns escalate about how the world will continue to feed itself against a backdrop of rapidly inflating food prices and a soaring population. 
This is interesting, will North America follow suit or will shake our heads. Food scarcity is a problem and I see that people will look for alternatives when they are needed. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 26, 2011 and is filed under , . You can leave a response and follow any responses to this entry through the Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) .
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2 comments

Anonymous  
27 May 2011 at 08:28

In terms of animal proteins to cattle, this would be a bad move, so I'm glad to see that cattle will likely not be affected. True, BSE can appear sponataneously, but our best evidence points to feed contaminants as the likely mode of transmission.

Animal proteins to pigs, chickens and the like have been proven to aid development and growth during certain stages - moreso than vegetable protein. However, the problem I see with this proposal is that poultry can only be fed animal protein from swine and vice versa, so there is a huge burden of proof to determine that the animal protein came from the "correct" souce - and what would this cost to monitor and regulate??

Karin

Anonymous  
31 May 2011 at 16:32

We should not be playing around with mother nature... again? Isn't this another short cut that we are not entirely sure of? Feed chickens, pigs, fish whatever what they need to keep us healthy... that's all! :)

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