Too much mad-cow safety?

• Author: Prugh, Tom
• Position: Environmental Intelligence

Last December, the first known case of mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE) in the United States was discovered in a Washington state cow imported from Canada. A panel of experts assembled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has said there is a "high probability" of further BSE cases in the United States. The true rate is unknown, and the department currently tests only a fraction (21,000 in 2003) of the 35 million U.S. cattle slaughtered every year.

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Yet USDA is refusing to allow a small, upscale beef-packing company to test all of its cattle, voluntarily and at its own expense, for BSE. A USDA spokesman says that such comprehensive testing would imply "a consumer safety aspect that is not scientifically warranted." The company, Denver-based Creekstone Farms, normally exports much of its beef to Japan, which has banned imports of untested U.S. beef. Creekstone is losing $200,000 a day and says it could go out of business. Larger packing companies, which can sell other meats, have opposed such testing.

Humans who eat beef from cattle with BSE may develop a similar illness called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), which is untreatable and always fatal. An outbreak of BSE in Britain in the 1980s has led to over 140 confirmed vCJD deaths there. The outbreak was spread by the now-banned practice of feeding cattle the ground-up remains of other ruminant animals, especially sheep. The United States banned the practice in 1997 and also blocks importation of all ruminants...