The Mad Cows Finally Come Home

O n December 23, 2003, the first official U.S. case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)—better known as mad cow disease—was reported by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) at the Sunny Dene Ranch near Mabton, Washington. While Wall Street investors scrambled to monitor their McDonald’s stocks, White House spokesperson Scott McClellan hastened to assure everyone that President Bush was still enjoying beef. USDA secretary Ann Veneman also publicly pledged to serve beef to her family as part of their yuletide feast. The world’s response to the arrival of mad cow in the U.S. was basically a replay of what happened earlier in Canada when BSE was reported there in May. A total of 43 countries have now imposed bans on U.S. beef imports, including Japan, which purchased $854 million worth in 2002. Of the top four beef buyers (Japan, Mexico, South Korea, and Canada account for 92 percent of U.S. exports) only Canada does not have a full ban (Canada will accept boneless beef from U.S. cattle under 30 months old). The final economic impact on the $40 billion U.S. beef industry won’t be known for a while. Wisconsin alone exported live animals and meat worth $194 million last year, much of it to Japan and South Korea. Meanwhile, those U.S. farmers who had already switched to low-input, organic, grass-fed systems reported unprecedented demand for their BSE-free meat. Similar booms in natural grass-fed beef prices are being reported in Brazil and Australia. 

Mad cow is but one member of an extended disease family known as Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs). These TSEs are caused by eating bits of renegade protein known as prions. Since these abnormal prions cannot be digested, they accumulate in toxic clumps eventually producing holes in brain tissue. In deer and elk, this lethal neurological condition is known as Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), in sheep it is called Scrappie, while in humans it is known as Kuru (endemic among certain human societies that practice ritualistic cannibalism), though there is growing medical evidence that pathogenic prions also trigger variant Creuzveldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), as well as some forms of Alzheimers. Being smaller and more resilient than viruses or bacteria, prions are not destroyed by freezing, cooking, sterilization, or irradiation. Worse yet, pathogenic prions can jump the species barrier. 

Upton Sinclair was one of the first to describe “downer” dairy cows—too sick to walk—being dragged to slaughter in his 1906 novel about the Chicago stockyards, T he Jungle . Many would argue that the situation in the factory farm/slaughterhouse meat industry complex is worse today than when Sinclair lived. Reading books such as Gail Eisnitz’s Slaughterhouse and Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation , it is tempting to look at the calendar to remind oneself of the century. Today, over 200,000 known “downers” are sent to U.S. meatpackers each year (though many others go undetected) and they remain primary mad cow suspects. Some of the first scientific evidence of the deadly presence of TSEs in the U.S. came from mink studies by Professor Richard Marsh of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Veterinarian Department in the 1980s. His finding that deadly factory mink farm epidemics were likely caused by high protein feed derived from “downer” dairy cows was downplayed by academic superiors, government officials, and industry spokespeople. Marsh was hounded and eventually ostracized for daring to expose the dirty laundry of the meat industry. Like Rachel Carson, his groundbreaking investigation is only now being vindicated after his death.

Researchers have shown that blood can also harbor pathogenic prions. In fact, U.S. residents who spent extensive time in Europe during the mad cow epidemic are not allowed to donate blood here and surgeons in the UK still rely on imported blood for operations there precisely because of this risk. Yet, under the current USDA regulations there is no labeling or restriction placed on feeding cattle blood back to calves in the form of milk replacer, calf starter, and other supplements. In Wisconsin numerous companies promote these milk replacers with “spray dried animal blood cells” to dairy farmers. Bovine serum is also used by corporations like Monsanto to “feed” the genetically engineered e. coli bacteria which produce its brand name rBGH—Posilac—yet any potential connection between this and BSE has not been addressed by the USDA. 

Another legal loophole for possible spread of mad cow involves gelatin, tallow, and “plate waste”—i.e., cooked meat that has been offered to humans and then salvaged by the meat industry for feeding back to livestock. Worse yet, USDA rules still permit the use of ruminant byproducts to feed non-ruminants—such as swine, horses, pets, and poultry—which are then in turn fed back to cattle or people. This vicious cycle of livestock cannibalism only magnifies the spread of BSE within the animal and human food supply. 

The immediate USDA response to mad cow in the U.S. was to ban use of downer cows for any human meat use, to hold all products from BSE tested animals until the results are actually in, expand overall BSE testing, ban use of Advanced Meat Recovery (AMR) technology on animals over 30 months old and phase out air injection stunning, establish a national livestock tracking system, and require tougher labeling of animal food products that contain more than just meat (i.e., spinal cord, brain, nerve tissue, intestine). For farm/food critics, these are long overdue steps that don’t go far enough. The USDA plan does not keep downer cows out of rendering plants to become “fresh” livestock feed, does nothing about ending the practice of livestock cannibalism, does not insure that livestock are free of BSE, or that human food is safe from non-meat materials that might contain pathogenic prions. 

Stopping Mad Cow

• Demand Immediate Congressional Investigation of the Meat Industry. There should be national public hearings on the mad cow issue and more general food safety concerns with the meat industry. Furthermore, Congress should call on the GAO for a comprehensive review of USDA and FDA meat industry oversight and enforcement activity, as well as consideration of alternatives—such as a more transparent accountable federal agency exclusively responsible for food safety. The contributing role of the land grant colleges also needs to be addressed since for decades public researchers and extension agents have been developing and promoting questionable technologies such as rBGH, AMR, and TMR, which help spread BSE. 
• Approve and Implement Country of Origin Labeling (COOL). Consumers and farmers have the right to know exactly where their food and feed come from—and this includes meat products, dietary supplements, milk replacers, and the like. Many farmer and consumer groups fought hard to include COOL in the last Farm Bill, but it has now been stalled due to agribusiness lobbying with the support of the Bush administration. COOL should be passed by Congress and enacted immediately. 
• Ban the Feeding of Animal Byproducts to Livestock. Livestock cannibalism is not natural and is dangerous. Herbivores should not be consuming ground-up carcasses of other animals as part of a “high protein” total mixed ration (TMR), or a separate nutritional supplement, no matter what extension agents or agribusiness salesmen say. The same goes for poultry manure, cooked human “plate waste,” gelatin, tallow, blood/bone meal, or other animal-derived byproducts used as livestock “feed,” which could serve as sources of BSE infection and contamination.  
• Ban the Use of Bovine Blood in Milk Replacer and Other Calf Supplements. U.S. citizens who have been to Europe and possibly exposed to BSE are prohibited from donating blood, yet U.S. agribusiness corporations are allowed to extract blood from slaughtered livestock and then sell such to farmers as a “high protein” ingredient in milk replacer, calf starter, and other growth supplements. The World Health Organization has warned against this vampiric practice for over a decade and it should be prohibited. The role of livestock blood in the manufacture of other livestock products—such as rBGH—also needs to be federally investigated for its potential BSE contamination role. 
• Ban the Use of “Downer” Cows for Human Food. Dairy cows that can’t even walk into a slaughterhouse have obvious health problems, such as BSE, and are not fit for human consumption. Meat from downer cows has supposedly been banned from use in the USDA School Lunch Program for years, yet it has been deemed by the FDA as safe to eat by adults and children outside of school. No downer cow meat or other byproducts should be allowed in the human food supply. The fact that irradiation does not destroy prions, should also make the USDA think twice about its decision to allow irradiation as an effective and safe form of “pasteurization.” 
• Ban Advance Meat Recovery (AMR) and Other Risky Slaughter Practices. Mechanical deboning and advanced meat recovery (AMR) are just money grubbing efforts to extract every last ounce of tissue from a carcass in order to make “more” product—hamburger, pepperoni, hotdogs, bologna, tacos, sausage. The use of air injection stunners and bolt guns to kill livestock should also be banned since this guarantees the splatter of brain tissue over the rest of the animal carcass. Such sloppy practices almost guarantee BSE contamination. People should not be misled into eating brain, cartilage, gristle, tendons, nerves, and other basically indigestible material they think is “meat” and thereby exposing themselves to pathogenic prions. AMR and these other risky meat industry practices belong in the technological trashbin.
• Regulate High Risk Animal Byproducts in Dietary Supplements and Cosmetics. Livestock tissues that could contain pathogenic prions such as brain, spinal cord, and dorsal root ganglia are also used as ingredients in many human dietary supplements. The federal government should require reporting from manufacturers, mandate risk warnings for consumers and comprehensive product registration, as well as explicit identification of the livestock ingredients and country of origin labeling (COOL). The same federal scrutiny is deserved for cosmetics that contain beef tallow. 
• Severely Restrict and Monitor the Importation of Live Animals. The reckless transshipment of disease-carrying species across borders has been one of the worst consequences of free trade—and the spread of BSE across North America is but the latest example. Just because factory farms are so unsustainable that they burnout their cows prematurely and can’t produce enough calves to maintain their herd levels does not mean they should be allowed to import animals from Canada or Argentina at will. The USDA must conduct strict border checks for diseases like BSE and implement a national livestock tracking system, like the one already in place in Brazil (now the largest beef exporter in the world). 
• Expand BSE testing to All Slaughtered Livestock . Comprehensivs BSE testing of all livestock is already mandated in Japan, and can be done in but a few hours with new BSE tests that the U.S. has not yet adopted. In fact, one of these quick BSE tests, widely used in Europe, was developed by 1997 Nobel Prize winning scientist and prion expert, Prof. Stanley Prusiner at the University of California, San Francisco. The U.S. needs to upgrade its scientific procedures, learn from other countries, and get more serious about routine livestock disease testing. Ignorance is not bliss. 
• Expand Preventative TSE Research and Begin CJD Monitoring in Humans. The U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) should begin proactive education of medical professionals about TSEs and initiate nationwide monitoring of CJD. Casual surveys of death certificates are not adequate. The National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at Case Western Reserve University, created by the CDC in 1997, needs more funding and publicity of its vital work. While the National Institute of Health has allocated $27 million towards TSE related research, this work needs to get beyond theoretical issues to work on preventative solutions. 

John E. Peck is the executive director of Family Farm Defenders.  For more information, contact: Family Farm Defenders, PO Box 1772, Madison, WI 53701; www. familyfarmdefenders.org.