LA Times: Tainted Feed Suspected in First U.S. Case of `Mad Cow' Disease

Agriculture Department officials said Wednesday that the dairy cow that tested positive this week for "mad cow" disease, a first in the United States, probably contracted the illness through feed containing tainted animal parts, despite a federal ban on putting such materials in cattle feed.

The diseased cow was born about 1999, officials said, two years after a federal rule took effect that was designed to stop cattle from receiving tainted feed. Officials said they could not speculate whether a violation of the rule had led the animal to become infected.

The rule stated that cattle feed may not contain most proteins from mammals. It was intended to prevent a repeat of Britain's "mad cow" crisis, in which the disease was thought to have infected more than 183,000 cattle in the 1980s and 1990s, primarily because proteins from diseased animals were fed to healthy ones.

Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine at the Food and Drug Administration, said compliance with the feed rule was only about 75% when it was enacted in 1997. It has since risen to 99%, he said...