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Til We Meat Again
Mad Cow Disease (last updated February 15, 2005) (back to top)
In this episode, a Massachusetts town outlaws the sale of beef, ostensibly because of concerns over mad-cow disease. In real life, such a law, if ever enacted, probably would withstand court scrutiny - courts cannot simply strike down silly or misguided laws but generally can strike down laws only when the laws exceed government authority or infringe on constitutional rights. Owners of steak restaurants would be better off campaigning against such prohibitions before they become laws.
The first U.S. case of mad cow disease, technically known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), was identified in a non-ambulatory dairy cow that was slaughtered on December 9, 2003 at a slaughter plant in Moses Lake, Washington and that is believed to have originated from a dairy farm in Alberta, Canada.
Since the case was confirmed, the government has tried to strengthen protection against further cases. Among other things, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service began a testing program in June 2004 to determine whether U.S. cattle exhibit BSE and at what levels. As of mid-February 2005, 231,450 cattle that exhibit some type of clinical signs of BSE had been tested under this program, with no cases of BSE confirmed. Participation in the program is voluntary; the USDA has said that implementing a mandatory program would have taken longer to implement. APHIS has a summary of test results on-line here.
BSE
BSE is a progressive neurological disorder of cattle that results from infection by an unknown transmissible agent. Many governments took action to control BSE once it was recognized as a disease in cattle in the late 1980s, but its link to a fatal neurological disease in humans in 1996 led to massive governmental action in the United Kingdom and in Europe, with great cost to the cattle industries there.
BSE was first recognized and defined as a fatal neurological disease in the United Kingdom in November 1986. Epidemiological studies have identified the vehicle of infection to be meat-and-bone meal (MBM) incorporated as a protein source in feedstuffs, possibly originating with the use of sheep contaminated with scarpie, a common disease, and then amplified through the use of recycled cattle tissues. The United Kingdom banned feeding such ruminant-based protein back to ruminants in July 1988 and implemented a compulsory slaughter policy for confirmed cases of BSE in August 1988, but such measures were not completely effective because some cattle feedstuffs had been contaminated during production.
By May 2000, 61 people in the United Kingdom, Ireland and France had died of a human illness, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which is believed to be linked to BSE, though there is no direct evidence of such a link. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease was first identified in March 1996 and is seen as a new variant of the Gerstmann-Strdussler syndrome, a very rare genetic disorder.
A 2000 report by the Government Accounting Office called BSE "one of the most significant threats to human health that can result from unsafe animal feed" and said that any case in the United States "would increase concerns about a related risk to public health and have a potentially major economic impact on the domestic feed, dairy, and beef industries." As of 1999, BSE had cost an estimated $6.74 billion in the United Kingdom, and had caused more than 176,000 cattle to be destroyed there.
Government Action
The first BSE case in the United States was identified in a non-ambulatory dairy cow that was slaughtered on December 9, 2003 and that is believed to have originated from a dairy farm in Alberta, Canada. Test results showing BSE were first made on December 22, announced on December 23, and confirmed by December 25.
Since this time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has traced the cow back to its original source, recalled meat from all cows slaughtered at the Washington plant on December 9, 2003 and implemented new controls to further control the situation. For example, new regulations were issued on December 30, 2003 stopping inspectors from marking cattle possibly having BSE as "inspected and passed" before test results were confirmed as negative.
The United States had taken some action in the late 1980s and in the late 1990s. In 1989, the United States Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) banned importation of live cattle and of cattle products from countries where BSE was known to exist. In 1997, APHIS extended this ban to include all of Europe and the Food and Drug Administration prohibited the feeding of certain mammal-derived feed to cattle, and in 2000, the USDA prohibited the import of rendered animal products, regardless of species, from Europe.
The cow having BSE is believed to have been six-and-a-half years old at the time of death, which means that it was born before the 1997 ban and thus could have been fed mammal-derived feed.
The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization reported in June 2001 that more than 30 countries had improved monitoring and have banned the import of MBM and live cattle from Western Europe. At the same time, the FAO noted that more than 100 countries, particularly in Eastern Europe, Asia and the Near East, are still at risk since they imported MBM in the 1980s, and that some countries are at risk since they have not completely banned the use of animal protein feeds to all farm animals.
Sources: The United States Department of Agriculture has information about BSE on-line here, including a chronology of events surrounding the case in the United States here. United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, available on-line here. John W. Willesmith, Manual on Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (FAO, 1998), available here. United States General Accounting Office, Food Safety: controls can be strengthened to reduce the risk of disease linked to unsafe animal feed (September 2000). The World Health Organization has a fact-sheet on BSE here.
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