There are three major precautions. It is also illegal to important animal feed. It is also illegal for cattle feed to contain body parts from dead animals that would be at risk for having mad cow disease. For example, you can t include sheep body parts in cow feed because of the way animals contract mad cow disease. The disease occurs when a healthy animal ingests body parts from infected animals, then the healthy animal contracts the disease and dies.
Some people suggest that there are some gaps in the firewall of protection.
Even watchdog organizations say that the laws are good, and the organizations applaud the government for putting those laws in place many years ago. The gaps that are being referred to involve making sure that feed processing plants know what the laws are and how to comply. For example, even though the current laws banning animal body parts from cattle feed have been in place for years, many feed processing plants don t even know about them. That is the kind of gap these people are talking about. Also, meat-processing plants are not supposed to put the spinal column in the machine that scrapes the last bit of beef out.