Chicken Feces in Cattle Feed

  • Author David Kirby says cattle eating cattle by-product could risk another outbreak of mad cow disease. The FDA says there’s no measurable risk. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

The hamburger you put on the grill this weekend could be from cattle raised on feed that includes chicken feces. Lester Graham reports…a year-old Food and Drug Administration rule says it’s safe:

Transcript

The hamburger you put on the grill this weekend could be from cattle raised on feed that includes chicken feces. Lester Graham reports…a year-old Food and Drug Administration rule says it’s safe.

The rule came about after the mad cow disease outbreak. It made some changes, but still allows putting chicken litter – that’s the straw, feathers, chicken manure and scattered food left after raising chickens in a building– into cattle feed.

David Kirby wrote a book entitled “Animal Factory.” He says the government buckled to the chicken industry because the industry didn’t have a place to go with all the chicken litter.

“There’s too much to spread on local farmland, so they very often put it into cattle feed. It contains urea which cows can convert into protein.”

Chickens are messy. They scatter their feed and it gets into the chicken litter that’s put in some cattle feed. Some chicken feed contains beef by-products. Kirby says cattle eating cattle by-product could risk another outbreak of mad cow disease. The FDA says there’s no measurable risk.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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