US violates global standards on preventing mad cow disease.

• Author: Greger, Michael
• Position: Thinking Ecologically

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association describes government and industry efforts to safeguard the American public from mad cow disease as "swift," "decisive" and "aggressive." The world's authority on these diseases disagrees. Dr. Stanley Prusiner is the scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of prions, the infectious agents thought to cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease. The word Dr. Prusiner uses to describe the efforts of the US government and the cattle industry is "terrible."

In 1996, in response to the revelation that young people in Britain were dying from variant Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (vCJD), the human equivalent of mad cow disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued seven "Recommendations," four of which were concrete prescriptions to reduce the likelihood of mad cow disease spreading to human populations. To this day, the United States government continues to violate each and every one of these four guidelines.

1. Stop feeding infected animals to other animals.

   The number one recommendation of the World Health Organization was that no "part or product" of any animal showing signs of a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), or mad cow-like disease, should be fed to any animal. Yet in the US it remains legal to feed deer and elk known to be infected with a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy called chronic wasting disease to livestock such as pigs and chickens.

   Although science has yet to investigate whether pigs and chickens are susceptible to "mad deer" prions, there is a concern that even if these animals don't develop clinical symptoms of the disease, they could become so-called "silent carriers." Dr. Richard Race is a Senior Investigator with the National Institutes of Health. In 2001, he published a landmark paper showing that even species thought to be resistant to particular strains of prions could invisibly harbor the disease and pass it on to other animals. He also found that these deadly prions were somehow able to adapt to the new species, becoming even more lethal and replicating faster and faster.

   The reason Dr. Race is so concerned is because chronic wasting disease (CWD) seems unique in that it's the only prion disease thought to be spread by casual contact between deer through exposure to, or exchange of, bodily fluids such as saliva. And the best available research suggests that CWD prions can infect humans as well, perhaps even as readily as mad cow disease can. Dr. Race wonders if people could become silent carriers as well. All transmissible spongiform encephalopathies are invariably fatal. Consumer advocates argue that these prions should not be allowed to enter into the food chain.

   In May 2003, the Food and Drug Administration finally drafted proposed voluntary "suggestions" for the rendering industry, recommending that deer and elk infected with chronic wasting disease, or at high risk for the disease, be excluded from animal feed. However, even if this proposal is enacted, it represents only non-binding, non-enforceable "guidance" recommendations for the industry.

2. All countries need to establish adequate testing and surveillance.

   The World Health Organization's second guideline was for all countries to establish adequate testing and surveillance for mad cow disease according to the standards set down by the Office International des Epizooties (OIE), World Animal Health Organization. The OIE's International Animal Health Code recommends, in Article 3.8.4.3, that, "Cattle that have died or have been killed for reasons other than routine slaughter (including 'fallen' stock and emergency slaughter) should be examined." This is where the United States (and Canada) fall seriously short.

   The combination of these two populations, "fallen stock and emergency slaughter cattle," is essentially equivalent to the US nonambulatory, or "downer" cattle population. Every year, an estimated 195,000 to a million cattle collapse in the US for largely unknown reasons and are too sick or injured to rise. Even though these downed animals are not even fit to stand, an investigation of USDA slaughterhouse records showed that most of them are still ruled fit enough for human consumption. Over the past 10 or so years, though, the USDA has tested less than 2% of the downer cattle in United States. And, those tests were almost exclusively limited to animals that were sent to slaughter. The US tests even fewer of the downer cattle on farms and ranches that never make it to the...