From tainted feed to mothers' milk; a pesticide's devastating journey through the food chain

From Tainted Feed to Mothers' Milk

Times became difficult last year formany people in and around Van Buren, Ark., when dairy herds on nearly 100 farms were quarantined. Farmers watched their livelihood literally go down the drain as they were forced to dump milk by the thousands of gallons. Milk and milk products were recalled from eight states, and samples were analyzed. Even nursing mothers were advised to have their milk tested.

The problem was a pesticide calledheptachlor. It had contaminated cattle feed produced in Van Buren and, from there, had traveled up the food chain to the millk.

Heptachlor causes cancer in animals,may cause cancer in humans, and, in fact, is of sufficient health concern that it's banned from all uses except killing termites. In breast milk, heptachlor poses a special risk because the body absorbs it rapidly and can store it in fatty tissue for a year or more. Breast milk, like cow's milk, is rich in fat, so it becomes a major route for elimination of heptachlor from the mother's body. A baby fed heptachlor-contaminated breast milk could, in fact, have heptachlor levels greater than the mother.

FDA's New Orleans laboratory discoveredheptachlor in seed and feed samples collected during an inspection of feed facilities in Van Buren during January and February 1986. Two Van Buren firms were involved: J.E.W., Inc., bought seed and grain to make a fuel-grade alcohol called gasohol and then sold the mash byproduct to Valley Feeds, Inc., which, in turn, sold it as an animal feed to farmers in Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. Heptachlor was in the seed J.E.W. bought, and it was carried through to the finished feed.

FDA had identified a serous problem.But how widespread was it? To find out, FDA investigators and scientists from New Orleans, Dallas, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Buffalo, Seattle, and Atlanta--with cooperation from state and local government agencies --collected and analyzed samples from all milk and milk products produced within 150 miles of Van Buren, more than 1,400 samples in all. Eventually, the output of the quarantined herds was recalled from outlets in Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.

On the recommendation of FDA,a U.S. attorney in Arkansas obtained a consent decree under which J.E.W. and Valley Feeds agreed to stop selling contaminated mash and feed. The investigations led to the involvement of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency, the FBI, Congress, and even President Reagan. And in November 1986, Jack E. White, Brownie C. McBride, Jerry L. Finley, and Henry R. White of the Van Buren firms were indicted by a federal grand jury. The 52 counts in the indictment included not only violations of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act but also charges of fraud, racketeering, and other illegal acts. (Not all defendants were charged with all 52 counts.)

FDA's involvement actually beganin 1984, when the agency's Nashville district office notified the New Orleans office that a Mississippi firm was sending J.E.W. a load of corn contaminated with aflatoxin, a cancer-causing poison produced by mold growing on grain. Aflatoxin can't be entirely avoided or eliminated from grain, but FDA can take enforcement actions if the aflatoxin level is at or above 20 parts per billion. Grain contaminated with that much aflatoxin can't be used for food or feed and, even if it's used to make gasohol, any mash produced during the processing also must be free from excessive aflatoxin before being used for feed. FDA's Nashville office had been monitoring the corn in Mississippi. Now it was New Orleans' turn.

So, FDA paid follow-up visits toJ.E.W. and Valley Feeds and collected a number of samples for laboratory analysis. Excessive aflatoxin was found in the corn, in the gasohol mash, and in the finished feed made from the mash. The firms were notified of the findings in February 1985.

Excessive aflatoxin was again foundin samples collected by FDA in visits later that year. In November 1985, the agency wrote a second time to the firms, telling them of the contamination.

Then, during FDA's January-February1986 follow-up inspection, the investigator noticed that pink seeds were mixed with the grain used to make the gasohol. Seed grain is dyed an unnatural color, such as pink, if it has been treated with a pesticide to signal that it should not be used as feed.

Analysis of samples taken then revealedheptachlor as well as aflatoxin. One sample of finished feed, in fact, contained a heptachlor level that was a thousand times greater than FDA's action level. Samples of milk taken from cows that ate feed produced by the firms also were found to contain substantial amounts of heptachlor and aflatoxin.

Action levels for pesticides like heptachlorare recommended by EPA and adopted and enforced by FDA. In animal feed, the action level for heptachlor is 0.03 parts per million; in milk fat, 0.1 parts per million. Action levels for other chemical contaminants, such as mold toxins like aflatoxin, are determined and established by FDA. The action level for aflatoxin in most feed and food is 20 parts per billion; in milk it's only 0.5 parts per billion.