Mad Cows, Mad People

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, Oct, 2001

Virtually everything you read about Mad Cow disease in the mainstream media is intended to protect not the public's health, but the economic viability of the $400 billion meat industry.

Alternative Medicine, May 2001

"Beef is safe...British beef is...not a public health risk and can be eaten with complete confidence - a view endorsed by the European Community's top scientists."

John Gummer, Agriculture Minister of Great Britain, 1990, before Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) was found to be epidemic in 34,000 British cattle herds.

"There is no conceivable risk of BSE being transmitted from cows to people."

The Rt. Hon. Stephen Dorrell, Britain's Minister of State for Health, 1995, a year before the first human fatality was confirmed.

"It's unlikely that (the disease) would occur in the United States" and any incursion "of epidemic proportions is extremely unlikely."

Linda Detwiler, senior staff veterinarian with the US Department of Agriculture's animal and plant health inspection service, December 2000.

"As European nations scramble in fear of 'mad cow' disease, US business and government have calmly assured consumers that for the last decade they have taken the necessary steps to protect the nation's meat supply."

Reuters news story, January 21, 2001

The above assurances from the official guardians of health in the United States are as meaningful as the earlier utterances of their British colleagues. Here is why:

The US government claims to have protected our cattle by banning the infectious feed that is the supposed cause of Mad Cow, over ten years ago, and by having an ongoing program of testing cattle that show evidence of neurological disease.

Unfortunately, saying that this is too little too late is a gross understatement. There are as many holes in the government's claims as there are in the spongified brains of Mad Cow's tragic victims. There is room in this essay only to give a cursory mention of a couple of them, but even this is enough to show the magnitude of the threat.

Let's look just at the FDA ban on infected feed. It came as a rude shock to almost everyone that the meat they'd been eating - everything from a 39[cts.] burger to a $20 steak - came from livestock whose diet included a considerable amount of dead animals. This is called rendered feed, and in effect it turns herbivores into cannibals. It is a $3 billion business in the US, but it is obvious why the meat industry doesn't want people to know about it. Rendered feed is made up of 100,000 or more "downer cows" that mysteriously die every year, often exhibiting Mad Cowlike symptoms - but only an infinitesimal number of these are examined. So far the government has checked less than 12,000 cattle for BSE - out of almost 100,000,000 US head.

But rendered feed does not consist only of cattle - and all other livestock - that died from disease, old age or accidents. It is made of waste and inedible meat from slaughterhouses and supermarkets; from zoo animals, euthanized pets and road kill. This feed isn't banned, it is only prohibited from being fed to ruminant animals - animals that chew a cud, primarily cattle, sheep and goats. Rendered feed is still allowed to be fed to poultry, hogs and pets. Incidentally, pigs, cats and many other animals have their own varieties of Mad Cow disease.

Yes, rendered feed from countries whose herds were infected with Mad Cow has been prohibited from being imported into the US. However, at the height of the Mad Cow epidemic at least 500,000 tons of untraceable bovine byproducts were exported from [Britain.sub.a] to 70 countries around the world. Thirtyseven tons were exported to the US as recently as 1997, in spite of the ban - this shipment has never been traced.

Further, the US still imports huge quantities of dairy products, gelatin, collagen, fat and many other beef byproducts from Britain and Europe. These are used in cosmetics, pharmaceutical drugs, vaccines, supplements and processed foods. All of these can contain the infectious agent that causes Mad Cow. (emphasis added)

Meanwhile, a significant number of domestic companies have not complied with FDA regulations. The discovery that rendered feed from Purina Mills was fed to a cattle herd in Texas made big news - but this is the tip of the iceberg. According to a January 11 story in The New York Times, "Among 180 large companies that render cattle and another ruminant, sheep, nearly a quarter were not properly labeling their products and did not have a system to prevent commingling, the FDA said. And among 347 FDA-licensed feed mills that handle ruminant materials - these tend to be large operators that mix drugs into their products - 20% were not using labels with the required caution statement, and 25% did not have a system to prevent commingling.... Of 1,593 small feed producers that handle ruminant material and have been inspected, 40% were not using approved labels and 25% had no system in place to prevent commingling."