Ground Beef Contaminated By New Deboning Process Bits Of Spinal Tissue In Hamburger Raise Fears Of Mad Cow Disease

The Agriculture Department acknowledged Friday that a relatively new method for deboning beef by machine contaminated some ground beef with bits of spinal cord, bone and bone marrow, in violation of federal regulations.

One study by the Agriculture Department found that 16 of the 48 meat-processing plants that use the new machinery were not complying with the regulations. And a field inspector described the finished product as “blood, bone marrow and muscle gumbo.”

The department said it would tighten the regulations. It began studying the new deboning method after consumer groups complained that marrow, ground bones and nerve tissue were being passed off as ground beef.

But potential health hazards became a more central issue when spinal cord tissue was also found in the ground beef because the spinal cord has been linked to mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Studies have linked the cattle disease to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which attacks the human brain and is fatal.

There has not been a single reported case of mad cow disease in the United States, but it has been a problem in Britain.

“As far as we know, it doesn’t exist in this country,” said Robert Hahn, director of legal affairs for Public Voice for Food and Health Policy, one of the consumer groups that asked the Agriculture Department to investigate the problem of spinal tissue and bone marrow in ground beef.

“But the Food and Drug Administration has concluded that there is no absolute guarantee and has proposed a ban on meat and bone-meal feed that comes from ruminants,” he said, referring to livestock feed containing byproducts from cattle, sheep and goats, which can carry mad cow disease or similar diseases. “The only prudent course is to make sure spinal cord doesn’t get into the food supply.”

Thomas J. Billy, administrator of the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, said the agency had “no public health concerns” about the deboning equipment. But he said that “spinal cord is not an acceptable raw material” for human consumption and neither were marrow or bone fragments.

The new meat-processing technology, called advanced meat recovery systems, squeezes every bit of meat from the bones. It has been banned in England and France.

According to the Agriculture Department’s survey, which looked at meat-processing plants, the mechanically recovered meat has poorer-quality protein and more fat, calcium, bone residue, iron and cholesterol than the meat deboned by hand.

The machinery, which costs between $50,000 and $150,000, is used by about 75 percent of the nation’s largest meat processors. In the past year, the machines have produced an estimated 400 million pounds of ground meat.