MAD COW NEWS

Activists take case to meat eaters On Christmas Eve, less than a day after federal officials uncovered the first known case of mad cow disease in the United States, converging streams of animal rights activists, vegans and organic food proponents were already planning ways to capitalize on what they saw as the silver lining of opportunity in the nationwide scare. They had to. After years of waving their arms about the way beef cattle are raised and the health risks associated with eating meat, suddenly the nation was listening; the security of that most American of meals -- the hamburger -- had been threatened...Wash. Schools Weigh Beef Scare Meat chili. That is lunch today in eastern Washington state's Reardan-Edwall School District, where 650 students will return to class. The district is about a 90-minute drive from the Moses Lake plant where a Holstein infected with mad cow disease was slaughtered. News of that first mad cow case in the United States broke Dec. 23, when many of the nation's schools were on break. That means today will be the first time that millions of students return to the school cafeteria, where hamburgers and meat-topped pizza often rule...Mad Cow Forces Beef Industry to Change Course The financial motive that drove the industry to defend practices like selling downers has been turned on its head by the discovery of mad cow disease. Now, in an attempt to rescue the market for American beef, the industry is being forced to accept regulation it has long fought. But some large American companies that process and sell beef had already abandoned those more controversial practices, which had been a rallying point for food safety advocates since mad cow disease appeared overseas nearly two decades ago. While a schism developed in the industry, the current crisis reveals how government regulators sided with companies that adhered to those methods of operation. When an animal rights group, Farm Sanctuary, and an individual, Michael Baur, sued the government to force a ban on using downer animals for food, government lawyers persuaded a federal judge to dismiss the case on the ground that mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, had not appeared in the United States...Mad cow weighs down a $175 billion industry The first weeks of the mad-cow scare in the US are rippling out through the nation's economy. In one way or another - from the tons of pet food made of "meat byproducts" for nearly 140 million cats and dogs, to the $200 million in beef waiting aboard ships and in port freezers, to meat-processing and trucking companies sending workers home - the $175 billion industry affects many millions of Americans. "Beef. It's What's for Dinner," proclaims the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, and American eating habits bear that out. Some 78 million meals featuring beef are served every day, according to industry and government figures, and it's not just the pot roast or filet mignon. Beef extract made from the remains of slaughtered cows is in taco fillings, pizza toppings, and other popular foods as well. Whether or not they're regular red-meat eaters, Americans are watching the situation closely. While two-thirds still think the beef supply is safe, according to a CNN-Time poll released over the weekend, a substantial 27 percent think otherwise, and they have either reduced their consumption of beef or stopped eating it altogether...Mad cow testing pressure mounts, Canadian rules deemed too lax The emergence of a second case of mad cow disease has renewed calls for Canada to dramatically increase testing for the brain-wasting disease in cattle. "This was an accident waiting to happen," said David Westaway, associate professor of microbiology at the University of Toronto. "Up until May of this year, we were screening about 2,700 animals a year." Canadian beef industry officials peg costs at $30 million to $60 million annually to test all animals ready for slaughter in Canada's herd -- something Japan already does. In 2002, about 3.4 million cattle were slaughtered in Canada...Government says feed restrictions are enough to protect consumers, but some leading scientists disagree The more Americans learn about the animal discovered in Washington state with mad cow disease, the more some might wonder what they're eating. The more pertinent question, though, might be: What did the cow eat? Or for that matter, any other farm animal ultimately bound for the dinner table? Should we be concerned about what these animals ate long before we ate them? "There's been a lot of criticism of the firewall, which really isn't a firewall at all," said Jean Halloran, director of the Yonkers, N.Y-based Consumer Policy Institute, a division of Consumers Union. The FDA has "taken half-measures that leave open back doors for the potential transmission of the disease," Halloran said. "They've tried to solve the matter by banning ruminant remains in feed to ruminants, but they allow pigs and chickens to consume feed containing ruminant protein. Then they permit poultry waste, which includes spilled chicken feed, feathers and chicken excreta, to be legally reprocessed into cattle feed." But to people like Gary Pearl, president of the Fats and Protein Research Foundation, a Bloomington, Ill.-based organization that conducts research and development of animal feed, chance has little to do with the matter. He said numerous studies strongly suggest that other farm animal species are not susceptible to BSE-like diseases, and do not transmit them. "There is no scientific evidence that a complete ban would enhance feed safety for other species: swine, poultry, aquaculture, dogs. If a ban does happen, it will be for emotional or political reasons. Science doesn't exist to support the idea."...FDA Faces Pressure for More Action Over Mad Cow The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which has not implemented any new safeguards since the discovery of the first U.S. mad cow case, faces growing pressure to bolster its ban on the use of cattle remains in certain animal feed. The discovery of mad cow disease in a Holstein dairy cow in Washington state has focused new attention on how cattle are raised and slaughtered. While the U.S. Agriculture Department rushed to impose a series of new food safety rules, FDA officials have said it would take time before deciding whether extra precautions were necessary to protect U.S. cattle herds from the brain-wasting disease...Some claim human link to mad cow A biopsy of her brain tissue showed the cause of her death was Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, an extremely rare, fatal disorder whose victims often die within a year. Medical experts insist there is no known link between classic CJD and mad cow disease. McKinley's daughters, Sharron Potts and her sister Debbie Creel-Martin, are convinced the experts are wrong. "The scientists don't really know," Potts, 56, said. "They don't want to talk about it. They are trying to put as little information out there as they can." Florence Kranitz, executive director of the CJD foundation, said lately she gets up to 10 calls a day from people who lost their loved ones to the illness and mistakenly believe it may have been caused by eating beef from cattle with mad cow disease...Fear of mad cow disease takes toll on Shasta Livestock sale Thundering hooves, clanking gates, the drone of the auctioneer and the buzz of friendly conversation all herald a typical weekly sale at the Shasta Livestock Auction Yard. But something was different Friday. It was the first sale since officials confirmed a case of mad cow disease in Washington state -- and everyone with a cowboy hat and an acre of land was talking about it. Only 400 head of cattle were up for sale Friday, compared with 2,000 or more on a normal week with no holiday. Buyers at Friday's auction paid a good deal less. Richard Stober of Fresno bought 40 head of steer for $150 a head less than he might have before the scare. A steer worth $1,400 two months ago might be worth closer to $1,050 if prices fall as expected. "It's a pretty dramatic drop," he said...How Now, Mad Cow? Big Beef was doing fine until disease felled a heifer. Will consumer anxiety cripple the industry? (Time Magazine) For the U.S., could this be the year of mad cow? The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) banned Canadian beef in May after mad-cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), turned up in a single calf there. Now it is America's turn. More than 30 countries have banned U.S. beef imports since BSE was detected in a slaughtered 6-year-old dairy cow in Washington State on Dec. 23. Though officials say the cow entered from Canada in 2001, the USDA last week instituted a series of measures to reassure consumers that American beef is safe, including a ban on the slaughter of cattle too sick or injured to walk, called downers, for human food. The BSE-infected cow was one such downer. The USDA also called for immediate implementation of a national animal-tracking system so the source of any diseased cattle could be more readily identified. As the public copes with the news, the U.S.'s $40 billion cattle business is bracing for trouble. The industry, led by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association in Denver, had originally fought the ban on downers as costly and unnecessary. But the losses caused by the BSE discovery in Washington State are likely to make those steps seem cheap by comparison. Big overseas customers like Japan and South Korea no longer want U.S. steaks; ships at sea packed with meat bound for Asia are turning back. Containers of frozen French fries cooked in beef tallow for the export market are idling in U.S. ports. In short, America's $4.3 billion beef-export business is pretty much dead meat, at least for now...Soup bones linked to 'mad cow' found in area, 7 Santa Clara County Restaurants Notified Seven restaurants in Santa Clara County received soup bones from a shipment of Washington state beef that has been recalled because it was believed to include parts of a cow that tested positive for "mad cow'' disease, a county official said Saturday. The risk of disease for anyone who ate food made from the soup bones is "extremely low'' because the products are not from the animal's spine, brain or small intestines, where the contamination is found, said Marty Fenstersheib, health officer for the Santa Clara County public-health department...Cattle feeding habits get new scrutiny Sixty-three companies -- including a rendering corporation with a Boise plant and a North Idaho feed mill -- have been warned about violating a ban put in place in 1997 to protect U.S. cattle from mad cow disease. The warnings, found in an examination of U.S. Food and Drug Administration records, show that while the risk of a mad cow outbreak remains small in this country, the threat remains. The FDA ban is intended to keep cattle from eating feed that contains beef byproducts, the practice Canadian officials believe may have led to the first U.S. case of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, last month...Lessons of mad cow scare, Consumers looking more at safety of food supply Every few years America gets a harsh wakeup call about the food supply. In the 1980s, it was the pesticide Alar contaminating apples. In the 1990s, it was genetically modified corn killing monarch butterfly larvae and E. coli tainting fast-food hamburgers. Now, the topic is mad cow disease. A squeamish nation has gotten a crash course in slaughtering methods, spinal cords and "downer cows" -- animals too sick to walk but, until last week's ban by Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman, considered safe enough to end up as hamburger or lunchmeat. Usually, after the shock of the realities of industrial food production wears off and government agencies promise policy shifts, everyone goes back to the supermarket and the incident becomes old news. But this time, things might be different...Column: 'Mad Cow' Legislation Comes Down to Economics Now that even the Texans in the White House have come around to banning the slaughter of diseased cattle, it looks like it took a congressman who hails from Queens to give the ranchers and dairy farmers a lesson in agricultural economics. In the decade before the crisis hit, Rep. Gary Ackerman, a Democrat whose district boasts a total herd of six head at the zoo in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, railed against the short- sightedness and greed of ranchers and dairy farmers for opposing such a ban on the sale of "downer" livestock, so sick or injured they had to be dragged to the killing floor. Ackerman warned that the animals posed a public health risk because cows infected with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy in Canada and Britain were downers. Fast food chains like Wendy's, Burger King and McDonald's already didn't accept the meat, and the government barred it from the school lunch program...Mad cow scare hits home Richard Nielson of Ephraim, a cattle feeder with more than 3,000 beef cattle in feedlots in Utah and the Midwest, saw the value of his cattle holdings slashed in half since the first case of mad cow disease was discovered in the United States on Dec. 23. Prices of cattle for delivery through April, which hit all-time record highs last year because of strong demand and the popularity of protein-rich diets -- have fallen dramatically on concerns over beef consumption and prospects of a domestic supply glut resulting from import bans on U.S. beef by at least 36 countries. The United States exports about 10 percent of its annual cattle production -- a $6 billion-a-year business. Nielson is among the many shell-shocked cattle feeders and ranchers nationwide who spent the holidays keenly monitoring cattle prices on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for an indication of where the bottom may be...Perilous politics, A summer election in Japan may spell disaster for Canadian beef Japanese politics could keep the U.S. border ban on Canadian live cattle in place into the fall, according to a Washington, D.C., think-tank. Mindy Kotler, an analyst with the Washington-based Japan Information Access Project, said she expects Tokyo to exploit the U.S. mad cow case for political gain - by maintaining a ban on American beef imports until after the summer. "The Japanese have an election coming up by the end of July for the upper house," she said. "Rural votes are a major constituency in Japan, and the agriculture lobby is very, very powerful. "U.S. beef exports to Japan are worth $1 billion a year. The Japanese government knows it can win votes by blocking foreign beef - they did it to Canada last year, and now they're doing it to us. The Japanese government couldn't have asked for a better political gift going into an election."...Mad cow politics feared A farmers' marketing group in the U.S. is pressuring its government to declare itself "provisionally BSE free," if an American infected cow is found to have come from Canada. While the move would point the finger for at Canada -- and specifically a northern Alberta renderer -- officials here are optimistic the Americans will rely on science and re-open their borders to our beef. But, "the unknown is if politics comes into play," said Gary Sargent, executive director of Alberta Beef Producers. "They've been talking all along of using good science." He said under the international animal health organization's guidelines, Canada would be allowed one infected cow per million, or up to 10 infected cows to still be considered low-risk for BSE. The Organization for Competitive Markets, which represents small farmers, is asking the U.S. government to declare itself "provisionally free" of mad cow if the animal is found to have come from Alberta, which would allow its export markets to stay open...Column: USDA politics rile meatpacker on a mission John Munsell tried to warn them. He documented the dangerous practices of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's meat inspection program. He took the evidence to the agency, telling them that deadly pathogens were in the meat supply. The response? They tried to shut him down. As concerns about mad cow disease spread, Munsell's story offers a case study in how a federal agency charged with protecting the food supply has been hijacked by the corporate giants it's supposed to regulate...Editorial: Economics drives industry reforms The U.S. Department of Agriculture will decide soon how many Washington state herds will be destroyed because of exposure to mad cow disease. "It would be safe to assume that ... some or all of those animals will need to be sacrificed," said Dr. Ron DeHaven, the department's chief veterinarian. At least three herds are at risk, he said, but other cows may be "sacrificed" as well. Destroying animals with even the potential of carrying the mad cow proteins is important step to reassure the public that its food supply is safe. The destruction of cattle is much more about perception than it is to combat the disease. The government wants to react swiftly to show the public it knows what to do. Yet so far the government's reaction raises more questions than answers. A column today on the cover of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Focus section says the U.S. Department of Agriculture is more worried about the prosperity of the beef industry than it is in substantive reform. Instead of learning from other nations' experiences with mad cow disease, the United States is repeating their mistakes, says author Eric Schlosser... Scientists Weigh Risks of Beef The repeated assertion by government officials that American beef is safe to eat -- despite the discovery of the first U.S. case of mad cow disease -- is based in large part on painstakingly acquired evidence that pure muscle from mad cows simply does not contain enough of the strange infectious material to give the disease to a human being. Muscle meat contaminated with brain or spinal tissue from infected cows is another matter. Eating it can be deadly. Scientists believe that is how about 150 people worldwide have contracted the human version of mad cow disease, which first appeared in Britain in 1996. But muscle meat alone -- beef, in short -- appears safe. The evidence for this is strong and convincing. But as with all assessment of biological risk, it is not absolute and unqualified. "I'd like to say for sure that muscle is safe. I'm reasonably sure that muscle is safe. But like everything else in science, the answer is incomplete," said Paul Brown, a physician and neuroscientist at the National Institutes of Health. He is a leading authority on bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the formal name of mad cow disease...Editorial: Crack down on ranchers To those in the know, mad cow disease in the United States is not surprising. Current animal feed and food processing practices virtually guarantee that brain matter from sick cattle and other animals finds its way into everything from hot dogs to ground meat and sausage. Rural America's farm-based economy is already teetering on collapse, so it is unrealistic either to expect producers to pick up the tab or alert authorities to unfit animals. Only stricter oversights balanced with fair compensation will keep dairies, ranches and farms from selling diseased carcasses and unfit meat to food processors...Organic meat coalition's sales up after mad cow announcement An organic meat coalition's sales have boomed since a case of mad cow disease was discovered in the United States last month, its founder says. "We've seen a big rise in business," said Wende Elliott, president of the Colo-based Wholesomeharvest.com organic meat coalition. "It only makes sense. (The regulations) that people in commodity beef are concerned about right now are already in place in our production." Elliott founded Wholesomeharvest.com in 2001 with her husband, Joe Rude. The coalition -- which sells beef, chicken, lamb, turkey, duck and goose -- has 41 small farm members in four states. Elliott said there's no fear over mad cow disease with the Wholesomeharvest.com products because the organically raised animals are never fed animal byproducts, which she said is a suspected source of mad cow disease...BSE safeguards failed; now what? The U.S. Department of Agriculture has erred in treating mad cow disease as a public relations problem. Its response smacks of damage control, not problem solving. Officials say the U.S. food supply is as safe as ever. With the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimating some 70 million cases of food poisoning last year, we're not sure that's a good thing. Safety in food remains a relative thing. In any case, it's a little beside the point. The late-December discovery that a sick cow butchered in Washington suffered from bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as mad cow disease, is an event worthy of great note. But not necessarily for the reason most people think. It's not because the whole U.S. meat supply is suspect. At least, there's no reason yet to believe it is. Rather, what we learn from this one mad cow is that measures that the government and beef industry believed were sufficient to keep the United States free of this disease are demonstrably inadequate. That's the issue - the inadequacy of safeguards...Column: A Bum Steer On Mad Cow Disease (Business Week) Other countries do much more to protect their citizens. In Japan, all cattle slaughtered for food, and, in Europe, all such cattle age 30 months and older, are tested for BSE -- costing just a few cents per pound. That compares with just 20,000 cattle tested in the U.S., or less than 0.001% of the 36 million animals slaughtered here each year. Now the cattle industry's successful lobbying is coming back to haunt it. Health issues, of course, remain paramount, but there's big money at risk here, too. Upon the discovery of the sick U.S. cow, 30 countries banned imports of American beef, including Japan, Australia, and Mexico. Those bans of U.S. beef exports could cost the economy $2 billion in 2004, estimates Chris Hurt, a Purdue University agricultural economist. Despite the USDA's reassurances, many food-safety experts fear that the ban on feeding bovine by-products to other cows won't actually protect America from mad cow disease. That's because it has some gaping loopholes. First, the ban doesn't outlaw the feeding of cow's blood to other cows. Beef farmers often feed dried cattle blood to calves as a supplement to promote faster weight gain. Some experts worry that could spread BSE...Forum Puts Mad Cow In Perspective, Veterinarian Reminds Attendees That Disease Is Non-Contagious Before Americans overreact to the recent discovery of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or "Mad Cow" in an American dairy cow, Sam Holland, DVM, South Dakota's state veterinarian, said it is important to put the ordeal into perspective. Holland was the keynote speaker at the ninth annual Midwest Farm Policy Forum Saturday at JD's Event Center, north of Yankton. "This is a non-contagious disease. It does not pass from animal to animal," Holland said. "It is contracted by animals who consume ruminant feed products." Holland said the practice of feeding ruminant blood and bone meal to cattle was banned in the U.S. in 1997. "Because the incubation period is three to eight years, it is possible to see cattle with BSE, but we are six years out and as we get closer to eight to 10 years out there is less chance we will find that disease."...Cattle sale barns resume auctions Some Kansas cattle auctions were canceled last week as prices fell in response to the discovery of mad cow disease in a Washington state Holstein, but sellers said they planned to hold auctions this week. Delaine Rezac said no one complained last week about his canceling his auction at the Rezac Livestock Commission Co., normally held Tuesdays in St. Marys, about 30 miles northwest of Topeka. By Tuesday, feeder cattle had fallen about $15 per hundredweight. With no clear sign of where cattle prices on the futures market would bottom out, Rezac said it would have been unfair to sellers and buyers to hold the auction...