I am perfectly comfortable eating things like glands and fat. I eat fish skin. I even eat corn smut, and other molds and fungus. Spores can be good! But when I hear that U.S. cattle are being fed chicken manure I take pause.

The practice of feeding cattle chicken poop was actually banned in 1967 but in 1980 the ban was reversed. When the mad cow epidemic was in full tilt the FDA again considered a ban because, and this gets better, the chicken poop can contain cow proteins which then lead to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow). But Inflatable Water Slide they did regulate the feed so the risk was all but eliminated… thus they still allow for chicken shit in cow’s food.

Even though it’s dense, here’s a link to the FDA docket on banned substances for feed. Do a find on ‘litter’ in the docket and you get some HUGE numbers. The bottom line seems to be that feeding cows waste is a great way to not only deal with the mess but save some dough on feed. And with little to no risk of infection!

Besides, due to nutritional
constraints, the actual rate of inclusion of litter in grower and
gestation ruminant diets is very low not more than 10 lbs / cow / day
— yielding significant additional dilution effect at the point of
actual feed consumption:
10 x 0.000012751 = 0.00012751 ID50 / lb litter
Consequently, it will require feeding 10 lbs poultry litter / cow / day
for 6,442 days, or 17.65 years, to achieve a single ID50 dose!

Leave it to the Canadians to regulate our farming system. Less you think this is one of those ‘you can find anything on the web’ stories here are the sources and the quotes. First from The Bovine:

You can find the following recommendation from the University of
West Virginia (as an example) on the web by simply Googling ‘feeding
chicken litter’:

“Alternative Roughages
The following rations are based on free choice feeding and is
adequate for both dry and lactating cows. Because chicken litter is
high in minerals, no salt or minerals need to be fed with this ration.
    70% chicken litter
    30% hay”

Now it may be just fine, healthy and even, dare I say it, a green way to raise animals. But I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do. It’s a by-product of industrial farming and nothing more. There are plenty of things real farms do with shit instead of feeding it to what we’re eating.

Enjoy your burger.