Don't Relax PAP Ban, says FSA Board
The Food Standards Agency has advised Defra ministers that the UK should not relax the ban on processed animal protein (PAP) being fed to farmed animals.
The ban was applied across the EU in 2001 as a control measure against BSE. The European Commission now proposes to amend certain provisions of the existing ban on feeding PAP to farmed animals.
But the FSA has advised Defra ministers that the UK should not support the proposals. In a letter to Jim Paice, the minister for agriculture and food, Jeff Rooker, chair of the FSA Board outlined concerns that the proposed changes would give rise to a risk of exposing farmed animals to BSE.
He wrote: "The board considered that effective enforcement of the controls needed, over the whole chain, from the generation of animal by-products in meat plants to use of feed on farm, could not be guaranteed."
He also raised concerns over the possibility of whether pigs and poultry might be susceptible to a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) and the risk that, if intraspecies recycling could not be prevented, a TSE might spread undetected in these species.
Referring to the results of a consumer survey, Lord Rooker reported that "a clear majority were opposed to the proposed changes on grounds of risk, and considered it wrong to take a risk in this area."
Furthermore it was stressed that, having reduced BSE to such a low level as a result of the feed controls, relaxing the rules would be a "backward step."
The decision on whether the UK should support the proposed changes to the feed ban will be for ministers, with negotiations in Europe being led by Defra.
With Strangles Awareness Week just around the corner (5-11 May), vets are being encouraged to share a survey about the disease with their horse-owning clients.
