Feed Test for RAM in Ruminant Stock Feed

Summary

The Ruminant Feed Ban was a cooperative initiative implemented by the Australian Government, the State and Territory Governments and the livestock and stockfeed industries to ensure that ruminant stockfeeds are not contaminated with Restricted Animal Materials. In support of this, a suitable testing regime was required to demonstrate freedom from contamination. 
As there were no internationally recognised standards for the detection of RAM in ruminant stockfeeds, work was undertaken to develop a testing capability to enable industry to demonstrate compliance with the Ruminant Feed Ban and to underpin regulation. This is the third of three projects aimed at developing this capability. 
This project was able to validate a testing regimen consisting of a Lateral Flow Device (LFD) as a screening test and microscopy as a confirmatory test. The ability of two Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests to accurately identify the species from which RAM contaminant was derived was also validated. This project assessed the effectiveness of current flushing/sequencing techniques employed by industry to clean a production line of residual RAM prior to producing non-RAM feeds. Results clearly indicate that current techniques are ineffective in achieving this. 
This project aimed to gain a preliminary understanding of the Australian stockfeed production and use chain and to identify the potential importance of RAM as a contaminant of ruminant stockfeed. Results from this project clearly demonstrated that RAM can be a significant contaminant of ruminant feeds and monitoring is required at all stages of production. The resulting report presents relevant information relating to testing stockfeed for Restricted Animal Material (RAM) for consideration by State & Territory Government and industry stakeholders that are involved in the Ruminant Feed Ban.  Specifically, the results presented in this report represents a risk-based random sampling of the ruminant feed production and use chain, to assist gaining an understanding of the Australian stockfeed chain and to identify the potential importance of RAM as a potential contaminant in that chain.