A new report by the Government Accountability Office lends added credence to what consumer groups have been saying all along; US safeguards against mad cow disease have gaping holes. The new report looks at gaps in oversight in the FDA's ruminant to ruminant feeding policy. In 1997, FDA banned the feeding of cow parts to cows, which is believed to cause the spread of mad cow disease. According to the GAO's investigative study, however, oversight of the regulation is severely lacking: [V]arious program weaknesses continue to undermine the nation's firewall against BSE. FDA acknowledges that there are more feed manufacturers and transporters, on-farm mixers, and other feed industry businesses that are subject to the feed ban than the approximately 14,800 firms inspected to date; however, it has no uniform approach for identifying additional firms. FDA has not reinspected approximately 2,800, or about 19 percent, of those businesses, in 5 or more years; several hundred are potentially high risk. FDA does not know whether those businesses now use prohibited material in their feed. FDA's feed-ban inspection guidance does not include instructions to routinely sample cattle feed to test for potentially prohibited material as part of the compliance inspection. Instead, it includes guidance for inspectors to visually examine facilities and equipment and review invoices and other documents. Feed intended for export is not required to carry a caution label "Do not feed to cattle or other ruminants," when the label would be required if the feed were sold domestically. Without that statement, feed containing prohibited material could be inadvertently or intentionally diverted back to U.S. cattle or given to foreign cattle. FDA has not always alerted USDA and states when it learned that cattle may have been given feed that contained prohibited material. This lapse has been occurring even though FDA's guidance calls for such communication. Although research suggests that cattle can get BSE from ingesting even a small amount of infected material, inspectors do not routinely inspect or review cleanout procedures for vehicles used to haul cattle feed. Read the report.