The Companions of Mad Cows

Last week, the Wall Street Journal followed up on the latest case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)in "Mad-Cow Diagnosis Confirmed in U.S." (March 14, 2005) (by subscription). BSE is commonly known as mad-cow disease which inspectors diagnosed in one US cow recently.

The Alabama cow was found during the USDA's random cattle testing, which is scheduled for reduction. The testing involves a primary detection system that identifies "downer" cows with motor disorders indicative of BSE. The Alabama cow was a downer cow. Suspect cows are further tested to confirm presence of the infectious agent.

The Wall Street Journal reporters wondered where the cow was buried, however the officials aren't sayng: "The cow, which is buried on a farm in Alabama that federal and state officials refuse to identify...." Now apparently the hunt is on for cows that the diseased cows might have consorted with. There aren't too many cases of BSE, but the search for companions causes a ruckus.

"[This] third U.S. case in the past 27 months [is] igniting a difficult search for companions that might also have been exposed to the fatal brain-wasting disease."(emphasis added)

How does one find a cow's "companions"? With great difficulty apparently, especially since the U.S. doesn't have a cow "identification system":

"Based on previous experience, it is far from clear that the government will find all of the cow's companions.... The search could easily involve hundreds and thousands of cattle, many of which have probably been eaten."

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy infects the brains and spinal cords of cows (and other animals, notably sheep, where the disease is known as scrapie). The virus is transmitted to humans where it manifests as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Acronym Required hesitantly trusts that this cow is safely buried away from other grazing animals, though we suspect that perhaps someday when the prion stricken cow has long since been forgotten and decayed, some inquiring grad student will be stunned by the number of prions they unearth in a random soil sample of the unidentified burial site.

Beyond the burial details of the Alabama cow, the question of how the USDA identifies and deals with BSE and downer cows remains. The risk of BSE appears to be quite low. A report issued today from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that internationally, cases of BSE where cows have died have declined steadily in the past few years to fewer than 500 last year. The U.S. has recorded three known cases of BSE, the most recent being this cow in Alabama, but so far no US citizen has contracted Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease where the origin of the disease was a U.S. cow.

Therefore, consumers shouldn't be "spooked" by this cow's demise, because according to beef industry officials, this cow was over ten years old and its diet consisted of parts of animals that aren't fed to cows anymore (I paraphrase). Take comfort in the fact that in 1997: "...U.S. and Canadian governments largely banned their feed industries from using rendered-cattle material as a cheap source of protein, although some loopholes remain."

Acronym Required elaborated on these loopholes in "Cow Rendering, Ingenuity Gone Mad", last October. At the time the U.S. had just tightened the restrictions on the parts of animals could be fed to cows, a gesture that some groups criticized for being too lax about things like allowing calves to be fed cow's blood in lieu of milk.

One BSE infected cow Alabama cow is not dissuading the USDA from cutting their BSE screening program back significantly, a fact that some find disturbing. Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, a Kansas meat packing company has taken testing for diseased cows into its own hands and is suing the USDA for the right to test all the cattle that it processes and packs. This would allow the company to sell beef to Japan, however, for the USDA has not allowed testing by the company for reasons that are unclear.

Some say that large packing companies and the USDA don't want to encourage testing or the demand for testing because it will hurt business, or see the system for overseeing meat safety as circumspect, if not obscured.But the USDA says the testing program slated for downsizing was instituted in 2003 in response to the first U.S. case of mad-cow in an effort to survey "the herd" and was never meant as a lasting measure, Creekstone's suit may be the answer to consumers looking to exercise more power over what they eat, even as the USDA asserts that the tests are unnecessary and falsely reassuring. One way or another, it's a clever marketing scheme.