Mad Cow Disease now in the U.S.

[Jensen]

Well, I truly hope common sense prevails. I did just read in another Sun article that the government is simply reserving judgement until the tests are in.

I'm surprised no one in the American beef industry has pointed fingers at Canada yet though. For the past several years, that seems to be the American thing to do when in a crisis.

[Jensen]

AFter reading the articles in the NY Times, something leaves me puzzled. If the inability to walk is one of the symptoms of BSE, why slaughter an animal that has to be pushed down the slaughter line with a tractor? Shouldn't that animal automatically removed from the other animals?

Didn't the cow in question fall ill after calving? I thought it was only slaughtered *because* it was downed.

[Jason Perlow]

Thought you guys would like to hear that the Niman Ranch PR people are already all over this thing:

From: Niman Ranch <info@nimanranch.com>

Reply-To: info@nimanranch.com

To: perlow@hotmail.com

Subject: Mad Cow and Niman Ranch

Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 14:20:18 -0500 (EST)

Dear JASON,

Yesterday the USDA announced that a case of Mad Cow Disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE) was identified in a Holstein cow in Washington state. Holsteins are dairy cattle.

Niman Ranch wants to assure our customers that we take every precaution to provide the safest meat. For over thirty years, we have raised our livestock using the highest standards of husbandry protocols. These are the protocols that help assure the safety of our meat:

· Niman Ranch has never fed meat or animal by products to our livestock.

o The USDA banned the use of mammalian bone meal several years ago, but still allows the use of such questionable ingredients as chicken feathers, chicken manure and fish meal.

· Niman Ranch only feeds all natural vegetarian feed. The feed for our livestock is fit for human consumption.

o We never use cottonseed meal or other ingredients that may contain high levels of pesticides.

· Niman Ranch cattle are Angus, Hereford and Short Horn. Our cattle graze on pasture for 14 to 18 months. They are slaughtered before they are two years old.

o The recent Mad Cow finding in Canada was from a dairy cow that was seven years old. The recent Washington state finding is also from a dairy cow.

· At Niman Ranch we are able to track our cattle throughout their entire lives, from birth to slaughter.

o Industrial cattle are frequently homogenized in feedlots and slaughterhouses from many different sources and are thus unable to be tracked to their origin.

· Niman Ranch beef are killed first and cut first at our slaughterhouse, insuring that there is no cross contamination with other cattle.

o At larger slaughterhouses, old dairy cows and breeding cattle, which have been shown to be the most likely source of the disease, are mixed with other beef cattle.

Because of these high standards, Niman Ranch stands behind our meat as being the finest tasting meat and also the safest.

[MHesse]

Is milk safe to drink that comes from mad dairy cows?

[Fat Guy]

Neither milk nor meat has ever been shown to transmit BSE from cow to cow. Only brain and central nervous system tissue.

[Fat Guy]

If the inability to walk is one of the symptoms of BSE

The inability to walk can be a symptom of BSE (this was the first time ever in the US where that was documented). It can also be a symptom of a lot of other conditions, or of simple injuries.

[hannnah]

If the inability to walk is one of the symptoms of BSE

The inability to walk can be a symptom of BSE (this was the first time ever in the US where that was documented). It can also be a symptom of a lot of other conditions, or of simple injuries.

I think it's irresponsible of any producer who knows he has a sick cow on his hands, whether he knows why it's sick or not, to sell it as a downer knowing it's going to enter the food supply - as dog food or whatever.

If a cow that stepped in a hole and broke its leg is sold as a downer, that's an entirely different issue. Unfortunately the market doesn't distinguish between the two.

[Fat Guy]

I think it's irresponsible of any producer who knows he has a sick cow on his hands, whether he knows why it's sick or not, to sell it as a downer knowing it's going to enter the food supply - as dog food or whatever.

Intuitively, that seems sensible to me as well. However, without documentation of actual human health risks from slaughter of downer animals, we would simply be asking already financially stressed farmers to throw money in the garbage.

[hannnah]

I think it's irresponsible of any producer who knows he has a sick cow on his hands, whether he knows why it's sick or not, to sell it as a downer knowing it's going to enter the food supply - as dog food or whatever.

Intuitively, that seems sensible to me as well. However, without documentation of actual human health risks from slaughter of downer animals, we would simply be asking already financially stressed farmers to throw money in the garbage.

But, for a small producer, it's also a significant hardship to get a non-ambulatory cow on a trailer to get it to the stockyard to sell it - unless you're really scraping by at a subsistence level and desperately need the cash right then, or you have several healthy animals accompanying it to the yard, it's not going to be worth it.

A 1200 pound cull cow is only going to clear you about $350 after fees (assuming a ballpark national average of $40 per hundredweight). If she's already produced a live calf, you've made your money back. It's real easy to take the high road at that point.

[Fat Guy]

$350 x 130,000 = $45,500,000

Perhaps not a tremendous amount of money in the grand scheme of the beef industry. Still, it's just one cost. Every cost imposed on producers needs to be weighed for sensibility, otherwise we simply start adding cost upon cost until we push the marginal operators out of business.

I'm still unclear, because of so many conflicting and confused press reports, on exactly what happened here. As of a week ago, my understanding was that if an animal shows signs of disease, it is not allowed to enter the food supply. Rather, only downer animals that do not show signs of disease are permitted in. This appears not to be the case, however. So before it's really possible to attack or defend the current policy, it's going to be necessary to dig a little deeper and find out exactly what it is.

Here's a quote from an article from November that states what I thought was the case:

Current USDA policies are designed to keep sick animals out of the food supply, according to Steve Cohen, a spokesman for the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). "Under no circumstances would an animal that shows clinical signs of illness be allowed to enter the food chain, whether that animal could walk or not," Cohen told CIDRAP News.

USDA veterinarians at all slaughter plants assess the condition of cattle brought to the plants, Cohen said. "If upon examination they [the vets] see any signs of illness, that animal is not allowed to go to slaughter," he said. Inspectors also check carcasses and condemn any that show signs of disease, he added.

Cohen said nonambulatory cows can be approved for food use if they show no signs of illness, which can happen with injured animals. "A lot of them are older dairy cows that have either hip or leg injuries," he explained. "Sometimes they have accidental slips in transportation, and that's why a lot of our inspection takes place in the transport vehicle itself, so that the animal doesn't suffer when being moved."

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/f...1003cattle.html

[Jensen]

I think it's irresponsible of any producer who knows he has a sick cow on his hands, whether he knows why it's sick or not, to sell it as a downer knowing it's going to enter the food supply - as dog food or whatever.

Apparently, a Seattle TV station has been producing an ongoing investigative report into the use of downer cows in the food supply:

KIRO TV

Check out all the links to the stories they've done on it, starting in October of 2002!

[hannnah]

The KIRO reports sound pretty accurate as far as inspection goes. In my experience, the vet generally gives cull animals a visual once-over, and it would have to be something pretty egregious to get it pulled from the queue - and if they're doing inspections on the trailer, they're not going to see much of the cow.

This site gives an idea of some of the conditions that don't necessarily get cows pulled from the food supply - ironically, it's on a university ag extension site recommending better producer management of cull cows to improve prices. They also recommend not taking downers to market. I'd dispute that 15-20% of a producer's revenue comes from cull cows, but that may be dairy-farm specific; it's certainly not that high for beef producers.

[Arey]

It's beginning to look a lot like Lent,

Everywhere I go.

The local Steak Fifty-Eight

Is pushing Tuna carpaccio.

[torakris]

I was just checking out the homepage of Yoshinoya (a gyuniku or beef bowl chain that uses 99% American beef, the other 1% is Australian) curious to see what they have to say about the import ban of American beef.

They didn't have any mention of it on the main part of their homepage but in the general section where they discuss the products used at their restaurants, they make a mention of the saftey of their products, I ahve no idea when this was written however.

But they mention that they only use beef belly (called short plate in Japanese, not sure what this cut is referred to in English) because this was rated as class IV as the WHO, meaning that is is BSE free even in an infected cow.

I had never heard of theses "rankings", does anyone know more about these, obviously the worst part to eat are the brains/nervous system, but how is the rest of the meat ranked.

The information from Yoshinoya (Japanese only)

http://www.yoshinoya-dc.com/about/food/beef/safety.html

[torakris]

found what I was looking for at the WHO site, the whole article is here:

http://www.who.int/emc-documents/tse/docs/whoemczoo973.html

CATEGORIES OF INFECTIVITY IN BOVINE TISSUES AND BODY FLUID

(Based on relative scrapie infectivity of tissues and body fluids from naturally infected suffolk sheep and goats with clinical scrapie)

CATEGORY I High infectivity

Brain, spinal cord, (eye)*

CATEGORY II Medium infectivity

Spleen, tonsil, lymph nodes, ileum, proximal colon, cerebrospinal fluid, pituitary gland, adrenal gland, (dura mater, pineal gland, placenta, distal colon)

CATEGORY III Low infectivity

Peripheral nerves, nasal mucosa, thymus, bone marrow, liver, lung, pancreas

CATEGORY IV No detectable infectivity

Skeletal muscle, heart, mammary gland,milk, blood clot, serum, faeces, kidney, thyroid, salivary gland, saliva, ovary, uterus, testis, seminal testis, foetal tissue, (colostrum, bile, bone, cartilaginous tissue, connective tissue, hair, skin, urine).

*Tissues in brackets were not titrated in the original studies (8,9) but relative infectivity is indicated by other data on spongiform encephalopathies.

[hannnah]

But they mention that they only use beef belly (called short plate in Japanese, not sure what this cut is referred to in English) because this was rated as class IV as the WHO, meaning that is is BSE free even in an infected cow.

Short plate in English as well - here's a chart that shows location.

Extrapolating from some of the carcass testing specifics on WHO's site, short plate would be least likely to come in contact with brain or spinal column tissue since it's located farthest from the spinal column.

[Pan]

My parents told me on the phone tonight that they will be avoiding beef. They also recommended that I avoid beef. I probably won't, but may wait a while to see how this story develops. I don't really want to say goodbye to that spicy beef tendon Shanghainese cold dish. (Is tendon a connective tissue under WHO definitions?)

[Kenk]

The question of what part of the animal is safe if that animal has BSE is not a valid argument. The mechanism of how this disease is manifested is not really known or understood. The only way to test for the disease is to take the subject brain and slice it up for inspection. There is no way to diagnose BSE in live subjects.

One of the things that is happening in Canada is that animals over a certain age are not being put in the food system. This begs the question of; Are the younger animal disease free or just not developed symptoms.

Fooling around in the food supply is a very large gamble. All vegetarian animals should never be fed meat byproducts. No animals should ever be fed manure. No cannibalistic feeding practices should be ever practiced.

I am not a granola crunching all things must be organic freak! When you have to try to convince anyone of these principles why would you be surprised major problems might be in the food supply.

Do you want to by any animal that is fed manure?????????(Why does this question have to be asked??????)

[Pan]

Kenk, when I lived in Malaysia in the 70s, almost all the village chickens were free range. If a chicken decided to eat a kid's crap or someone's snot that they spat out, who was going to stop them? Did it make the chicken meat dangerous or untasty? Not on your life!

[Fat Guy]

Kenk, speaking of begging the question . . . there are not major problems in the US beef supply. By every measure I've seen, the US beef supply is either the safest in the world or among the safest.

It certainly sounds unpleasant to be feeding meat to ruminants. However, especially if there is no evidence of human health costs associated with doing it, we have to ask what the costs and benefits are of increased regulation.

We know the costs. They're easy to document. And we know that we'd be putting many struggling farmers out of business if we pushed their costs higher. Ultimately, pushing people into bankruptcy or out of their traditional lines of work can be devastating in terms of both mental and physical health. Poverty can easily lead to premature death, not to mention reduced quality of life.

What about the benefits? If there is no statistically significant threat to human health from current practices, what do we gain by implementing new restrictions on feed, mandatory testing of every animal, etc.? We're talking about spending hundreds of millions of dollars of other people's money; I don't think we should be doing that unless we get something for it.

[Pan]

From Ha'aretz:

The Agriculture Ministry yesterday banned beef liver imports from the United States, following the discovery of a case of mad cow disease at a farm in Washington state. Dr. Oded Nir, head of the ministry veterinary service, announced the ban.

See the rest of the article here:

Israel bans American beef liver in mad cow scare

[Pan]

Fat Guy, I think that meat should be prohibited from feed for herbivores because I don't think there's a good reason to feed meat to herbivores. There are certain things that just seem like common sense to me. Another is not to routinely give out antibiotics when bacterial infection isn't reasonably suspected, because routine administration of antibiotics weakens them and encourges the evolution of multi-resistant bacteria, which are a danger to us all.

[Nick]

The whole thing doesn't bother me at all, except for the effect on small beef producers. I've been leaving beef for some time now and getting more into lamb, goat, and duck. Don't tell anybody... the prices are already too high, at least for lamb and goat.

[Fat Guy]

Fat Guy, I think that meat should be prohibited from feed for herbivores because I don't think there's a good reason to feed meat to herbivores. There are certain things that just seem like common sense to me. Another is not to routinely give out antibiotics when bacterial infection isn't reasonably suspected, because routine administration of antibiotics weakens them and encourges the evolution of multi-resistant bacteria, which are a danger to us all.

I guess it depends on what we mean by "a good reason." The reason isn't elusive: all these practices serve to reduce the price of beef, which in turn drives beef sales. This is how poor people in America can afford to eat beef, and how working-class people can afford to eat steak even though they're financially stretched.

Now, of course, there are plenty of people who will argue that cheap beef isn't a good reason to do anything. They'd be perfectly happy to see the price of beef double, triple, or quadruple, so that it could all conform to higher standards. Some would also like to see beef consumption reduced for (questionable) health/obesity/cholesterol reasons, or on account of vegetarianism or animal-rights or environmental arguments. And of course the very low prices, super-efficient production, and razor-thin margins on so many of our agricultural products are probably creating an unsustainable situation. I see that as a totally different species of argument, though.

So I think the only missing piece of the argument, in terms of "a good reason," is to ask what the downside is to these various industrial agricultural practices that supply us with so much beef at such low prices. And that's where, to me, the argument falls apart, because I don't believe any significant effects on human health have been documented from feeding meat to cows. While feeding meat to cows strikes at the cannibalism taboo, it doesn't seem to be a problem in terms of any sort of practical reality. So to ban it would, it seems to me, increase the price of beef solely in order to satisfy the feeling some people have that cows shouldn't eat meat.

I also think there's a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too problem here. As long as Americans -- and I don't mean just the poor ones -- buy the cheapest food instead of focusing on quality, they can't also be taken seriously when they complain about industrial agriculture.

[Pan]

Fat Guy, can't BSE be explained by reference to the Law of Unintended Consequences, and shouldn't people fool with Mother Nature with caution, knowing that the results of doing things like feeding meat to cows are unpredictable?