Inconclusive BSE risk for fish fed cattle blood products

The risk of transmitting bovine spongiform encephalopathy to animals and humans from feeding cattle blood products to farmed fish is inconclusive.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) concludes that there are insufficient data to quantify the degree of BSE risk following the use of bovine dried blood products as an ingredient for feeds for farmed fish.

EFSA's scientific panel on biological hazards said that there was only a small chance of fish themselves developing BSE through potentially BSE blood-contaminated feed. However, it said that the risk of animals or humans contracting BSE could increase if contaminated bovine blood products were recycled. This could be through direct contact, if bovine-blood products are fed to cattle, or indirectly, for example if fishmeal made from fish recently fed with BSE-contaminated bovine blood is given to cattle. EFSA states that intraspecies recycling of blood or other animal proteins, cattle to cattle or sheep to sheep, is not allowed under EU law.

The panel said that adding bovine blood to feed for fish could limit the use of current detection methods that distinguish between the blood and other banned bovine by-products in animal feeds, such as specified risk materials. These include cattle brain, spinal cord and other potentially BSE-infectious tissues.

Elsewhere, the panel said that the practice of stunning and slaughtering cattle may result in small quantities of BSE-infected material, notably brain particles, infecting the blood collected. This is in line with an EFSA opinion from 2004.

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Inconclusive BSE risk for fish fed cattle blood products