Cows, capitalism, and cover-ups: The politics and economics of mad cow disease

Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science, 2001 by Best, Steven

Seemingly, the U.S. remains safe, since no clear cut cases of BSE or nvCJD have been detected - a fact that the meat industries and government often exploit to foment complacency among the public. Yet every factor that caused the BSE outbreak in Britain has also been present here. As a result of both British imports and its own rendering practices, the U.S. is saturated with TSEs. Like Germany, France, and other European countries recently hit with their first cases of BSE, the U.S. is poised for its own mad cow outbreak.

American sheep have been infected with scrapie since 1947, and both cattle and scrapie-- infected sheep remains have been routinely rendered and fed to cattle and other animals. At least 45 states have been infected with scrapie, and in 1999 three flocks of mad sheep were found in Vermont.19 Cattle were imported into the U.S. from Britain during the 1980s when Mad Cow Disease first emerged. Like Britain, the U.S. uses stun guns and "Advanced Meat Recovery" technologies that blend brain and spinal material into the flesh and bloodstream of cattle. Certainly, rendering is routine. According to Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, authors of Mad Cow U.S.A: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?, "Each year, at hundreds of [rendering] plants in the U.S., more than 12.5 million tons of dead animals, fat and meat waste, are melted down, most of it to become protein supplements fed to pets, chickens, cows, sheep and other animals, the rest to make products ranging from gelatin to cosmetics."20 In 1989 alone, "800 million pounds of slaughterhouse remains were fed to U.S. beef and dairy cows as an inexpensive' protein supplement' designed to boost milk and meat production."21

If, as many believe, there are different strains of scrapie and BSE, then a BSE epidemic in the U.S. might not take the form of "mad" cows staggering around with spongy holes in their brains, but rather "downer" cows that simply collapse and die. 100,000 American cattle succumb to Downer Cow Syndrome every year, and they are routinely recycled as protein feed for hogs, sheep, and other cattle, or directly routed to the human dinner plate.22 Thus, the assurances of the beef industry and USDA that there have been no known cases of BSE-infected cows begs the question of what strain might be present in the American food supply. The glib proclamations of science, government, and industry that the U.S. is BSE-free are most unconvincing, especially in light of recent outbreaks in Europe (see below). The USDA claims to test downer cows for signs of BSE disease, but they only examine a small percentage of the millions killed each year (see below). Testing is problematic anyway because BSE-infected cattle may be asymptomatic and slaughtered for consumption before signs of the disease can appear. Currently, there are no tests that can detect TSEs in live animals.

Moreover, there have already been TSE outbreaks in other animals fed BSE-infected meat. This was evident, for example, in 1986 when veterinary scientist Richard Marsh discovered an epidemic on a Wisconsin farm where mink were fed downer cows. Able to infect the mink through the brain tissue of bulls, he concluded, "there was no species-barrier effects between mink and cattle ... there must be an unrecognized scrapie-like disease of cattle in the United States."23 In fact, scores of captive mink developed TSEs in at least 11 Midwestern farms as a result of being fed meat from downer cows. Since 1986, twelve different animal species have become infected with TSEs through BSE-laced feed. In 1991, the USDA issued an internal report revealing that staff scientists believed that a spongiform encephalopathy agent was present in the U.S. cattle population.