Compliance with Feed Ban is High

Compliance with the 1997 Food and Drug Administration feed ban is very high, according to the July statistics from the agency.  As of July 17, FDA had received 31,000 inspection reports.  About 70 percent of those were conducted by state officials under contract to FDA.  The remainder were conducted by FDA officials.

As a single firm can operate under more than one industry segment, the total number of firm categories will be more than the actual number of firms.  The industry segments inspected were renderers, licensed feed mills, feed mills not licensed by FDA, and protein blenders.

The total number of firms whose initial inspection has been reported to FDA is 14,355.  One-fifth of those handle materials prohibited from use in ruminant feed.  Of the 2,901 firms handling prohibited materials, 17 received a report of Official Action Indicated.  This means that inspectors found some sort of situation that they wanted corrected to ensure that ruminant feed is not contaminated with prohibited material.  These firms are subject to prompt re-inspection to ensure the compliance procedures are being followed.  These firms represented 6/10 of 1 percent of the total firms.  Only three licensed feed mills were classified as Official Action Indicated and six not licensed by FDA received the same status.

Another 86 firms were classified with a Voluntary Action Indicated.  Usually these violations are more technical in nature, such as recordkeeping lapses.