need to dispose of 15.7 billion pounds of material annually, he explained, “Currently, all of that is being fed…. It has an economic value, a nutritional value and an environmental value,” he said.

could not be made “at the wave of a hand,: McChesney said.
      At the same time, regulators are taking into consideration new data on the infectious dose for BSE. McChesney noted that the 1997 feed ban was based on the assumption that 1 g of infectious material was required to cause the disease in cattle; research Aban has shown that a much lower dose can be infectious.
      Current research points to 1 mg as Aban infectious dose – a thousand-fold reduction from the 1 g level.
      He noted that his agency has a goal of completing its rulemaking before the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration. He jested that the proposed rule likely would be announced A “on a Friday after 4:30p.m. I just don't know which Friday.” (Controversial decisions are often announced in Washington after the market closes to allow for a weekend cooling-off period.)

    While none have yet been formally published or enacted, McChesney said it is important for the world to get back on “a science- based approach” to BSE and away from reacting with “a knee jerk.”
     Meanwhile, USDA’s stepped-up testing for BSE is about one-third of the way to a goal of testing an estimated 268,000 highrisk animals.
     During the USAHA committee meeting, Dr. Ron DeHaven, administrator of USDA’s Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service, noted that the expanded BSE surveillance test could find as many as 5 percent inconclusive BSE tests. With little experience on such a massive testing program in the U.S., “we were basing that on a worst-case scenario, and that hasn’t proven true,” he said.
    So far, USDA has reported only two inconclusive tests in the program, and both of those were negative for the disease on confirmatory tests at the national reference laboratory in Ames, Iowa.

Richard Sellers, American Feed Industry Assn. vice president for regulatory matters, noted that so far, FDA has not submitted its revisions to the Office of Management & Budget, a step it must take in the interagency clearance process before a proposed new rule is published.
That means the industry continues to operate under the requirements of the 1997 feed rule.
FDA’s new rulemaking has been lengthy, and other safeguards – such as the removal of poultry litter and blood products – were announced to be under consideration last January.

     The current favorable results in USDA’s expanded BSE surveillance program could also have a bearing on the proposal for a total ban on SRMs.
     McChesney indicated that FDA is still analyzing options on an SRM ban. Results of public comments of the proposal indicated general agreement that removal of SRMs from animal feed would provide “substantial risk reduction,” McChesney said, “but those comments have raised the point that if we don’t find any (infected) animals, what is the risk reduction?”
     He pointed out, however, that a rule requiring the total removal of SRMs “could reduce the need to impose other feed controls.”
     “If we’re going to remove risk at the top of the chain by removing SRMs, why would we have to have dedicated facilities? It would also take pressure off feeding poultry litter back to cattle since no infectious material is in it,” he added. If the new rule was to require a total ban on SRMs – depending on which issues are included in the SRM definition – FDA calculated that disposal of 2.1 Billion pounds of material would be required.
      While that is enough material potentially to sustain a new “disposal industry,”: it would require major changes to the nation’s rendering infrastructure and