Mad Cow Disease now in the U.S.

[srhcb]

one sick cow

the whole world

6.3 billion people

All I can say is, WOW!

And we call the cows "mad"?

[MHesse]

Many businesses are regulated in one form or another in the name of increasing public safety or global preservation, from agriculture to dry cleaners to wood stove makers to swordfisherman to hedge trimmer makers. Sometimes the benefits are obvious, sometimes they are much less. Often these decisions are politically based rather than scientifically based. In all cases, the marginal producers are the ones who suffer and are forced out of business. That is too bad when the decision is political. It's better when the decision is really scientific. How do you draw the line for safety vs economics? A tough question.

[Singapore]

:::looks glumly at his Christmas beef roast sitting in the pan:::

Let's see. MCD in beef. Salmonella in poultry. Parasites in pork. Amoebas in the veggies. Acid in my rain, and carbon monoxide in my air. Oh the hell with it!

:::digs in!:::

Merry Christmas, y'all!

[phaelon56]

Not surprising that Wegman's, a progressive (in marketing terms) upscale grocery chain here in the Northeast is ahead of the curve as usual. For well over five years, possibly longer, they've had a separate line of beef available in their stores that is labeled and supposedly inspected to ensure that it is "beef you can feel good about". No growth hormones, no animal based feeds etc. It's pricier but looks to be better quality than comparable cuts of their standard beef.

I find it interesting that when my mother was a child (the early and mid 1930's) and was sent a few times each week to the butcher to buy ground beefe for the meatloaf, my grandmother ensured that she buy only beef that she watched them grind - she felt way back then that prepackaged ground beef was not to be trusted - you needed to pick your cut of chuck and watch the butcher grind it.

[=Mark]

It's interesting that the US was quick to ban all beef imports from Canada and Europe following the finding of infected animals, devastating the agricultural economies of many countries. Now when there is a confirmed case in the US we hear, "Move along, nothing to see here. Carry on. We have everything under control. Nothing to worry about".

[Jason Perlow]

The lab in the UK testing the tissue samples has Confirmed the Findings.

[tan319]

It's interesting that the US was quick to ban all beef imports from Canada and Europe following the finding of infected animals, devastating the agricultural economies of many countries.  Now when there is a confirmed case in the US we hear, "Move along, nothing to see here.  Carry on.  We have everything under control.  Nothing to worry about".

That's because, even though I love my country, we are SOOOOOO messed up!

Just full of hypocrisy.

You would think we would have learned something.

Why don't we start by not not feeding animals on their own .

If we don't eat humans, why should cows eat themselves, albeit in their feed?

Just a thought.

edited to show this gem from Jasons post above, lest everyone start jumping on me about us already banning the feed practice.

Cattle get sick by eating feed that contains tissue from the brain and spine of infected animals. The United States has banned such feed since 1997.

"Here's the problem, the feed ban has been grossly violated by feed mills," Stauber said in a telephone interview from his home in Madison, Wis.

In one such case, X-Cel Feeds Inc., of Tacoma, Wash., admitted in a consent decree in July that it violated FDA regulations designed to prevent the possible spread of the disease.

Agriculture officials said that only two out of some 1,800 firms are not in compliance with the ban, a significant improvement since 1997.

Edited December 25, 2003 by tan319 (log)

[bloviatrix]

That's because, even though I love my country, we are SOOOOOO messed up!

Just full of hypocrisy.

You would think we would have learned something.

Why don't we start by not not feeding animals on their own .

If we don't eat humans, why should cows eat themselves, albeit in their feed?

Just a thought.

I agree with you completely. I was reading the articles in the NY Times this morning and it's interesting to learn about the processes put in place in the UK, Europe, and Japan to monitor the health of cattle. And yet, there seems to be an arrogance in the US that we somehow know better.

There are some interesting articles in the Times, particulary this one about Dr. Stanley Prusiner, the Nobel prize winning scientist who identified the casue of BSE and his attempts to alert the administration about the dangers our food supply face.

[Fat Guy]

"Here's the problem, the feed ban has been grossly violated by feed mills," Stauber said in a telephone interview from his home in Madison, Wis.

Just to keep statements like this in perspective, the Mad Cow Scaremongers page prepared by The Center for Consumer Freedom (to be clear, they are an industry lobbying group) is helpful. Stauber is number one on the list of scaremongers, and has a long history of making wildly unsupported statements about mad cow disease. Folks like Stauber do nothing to help serious debate among serious people. I certainly intend to ignore pretty much anything he says as the distraction that it is. Far more reasonable sounding, to me, is the statement from the USDA that "Agriculture officials said that only two out of some 1,800 firms are not in compliance with the ban." To me, that's a high level of compliance. I'm not sure how that squares with "the feed ban has been grossly violated by feed mills" unless you want to make it "the feed ban has been grossly violated by 2 out of 1,800 feed mills."

[Fat Guy]

There are some interesting articles in the Times, particulary this one about Dr. Stanley Prusiner, the Nobel prize winning scientist who identified the casue of BSE and his attempts to alert the administration about the dangers our food supply face.

"Fast, accurate and inexpensive tests are available, Dr. Prusiner said, including one that he has patented through his university." I love how this is said without a trace of irony.

[mb7o]

Why irony? If he's developed a test which is inexpensive and has competitors, he may not be in it for the money. Edit: especially since Dr. Prusiner is (most promintely cited as) the one who figured out what caused wasting dieseases in the first place (assuming that prions are the cause).

Anyway, I'll propose (completely in jest) that this is all to drive down the recent high price of beef.

Really, what is going to happen? Wasn't the theory that the canadian case was from a cow (or steer) originally from the USA? Isn't the current system set up to reward those who keep this under wraps?

Edited December 25, 2003 by mb7o (log)

[Katherine]

...it's interesting to learn about the processes put in place in the UK, Europe, and Japan to monitor the health of cattle.  And yet, there seems to be an arrogance in the US that we somehow know better.

I've followed the BSE crises from the beginning, in both Europe and Japan, and I assure you that the processes that were installed in those places were in response to media revelations about head-in-the-sand regulations.

[Fat Guy]

Why irony? If he's developed a test which is inexpensive and has competitors, he may not be in it for the money. Edit: especially since Dr. Prusiner is (most promintely cited as) the one  who figured out what caused wasting dieseases in the first place (assuming that prions are the cause).

"Good science, not just Nobel Prize-caliber science, depends on hypothesis and test, and then the rigorous demonstration that the preferred interpretation of the data was the only interpretation. In other words, remarkable results demand remarkable evidence. In the case of Prusiner's prize, the Nobel Committee has settled for enthusiasm and single-mindedness." --Gary Taubes, writing in Slate, in 1997

"In 2001, UCSF licensed the technology for CDI, developed in the Prusiner lab, to InPro Biotechnology Inc., of South San Francisco, California, which Prusiner founded. Prusiner, Safar and some other members of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases are scientific advisors to, or own stock in, the company." --UCSF press release, Oct. 2002

[mb7o]

1. He has done testing from my understanding. At this point (5 years beyond the article you cite), very few people disagree with what was heretical 20 years ago, though the exact mechanism remains unproven. Actually research on scrapie predates the discovery of DNA.

1a. and testing the entire population of cattle would seem to provide a wealth of data to do further study, though europe or japan should be good data sets now that they do it. probably too much data to handle, really, since you'd need more than just the results from a single test.

2. it's clear from your original quote that you think he'll profit from this testing. my assumption (perhaps false) is that there are other tests too, and profit is not his primary goal. it's like someone saying "foie gras is tasty, and i happen to sell it." getting paid for your work is not neccesarily evil.

Some links for those interested:

http://www.cjdinsight.org/Deana/history.html - on the history of research into this subject.

http://www.mad-cow.org/griff.html - also on the history of research into this subject.

http://groups.google.com/groups?th=5105406...23636%40wingate - on this particular article.

Edited December 26, 2003 by mb7o (log)

[Fat Guy]

getting paid for your work is not neccesarily evil.

Getting paid for your work is never evil, unless the work itself is evil.

However, Prusiner's attempt to position himself as a selfless advocate of cows and humans, which is swallowed in its entirety by the New York Times, does not necessarily square with his long history of opportunism and self-promotion as documented by Taubes and others. Prusiner long ago decided to be an advocate rather than a truth-seeker, and should be treated as such in news reports.

The story of the prion isn't a story of science as a layman might expect it to function. It's not so much a story of rogue proteins and obscure diseases as of how a single set of results can be interpreted by different scientists in antithetical ways, and how one scientist with a flair for public relations can overcome seemingly valid criticism and dominate his field. It's also a story of how the traditional checks and balances of science--peer review and experimental replication--can be rendered impotent in the name of progress. This isn't a new phenomenon in science; the story of the prion is merely an extreme example.

--The big Taubes expose on Prusiner, from Discover in 1986.

[jeff29992001]

btw, the incubation period of BSE is 3-8 years

http://www.fda.gov/cvm/index/bse/bsetoc.html

so how many more cows have BSE, and aren't showing symptoms, and how many of these cows will be quietly killed and covered up?

[jschyun]

Far more reasonable sounding, to me, is the statement from the USDA that "Agriculture officials said that only two out of some 1,800 firms are not in compliance with the ban." To me, that's a high level of compliance.

How many of those 1800 firms did the USDA actually check, or was it just a spot check here and there? Or was it self reported?

On a related note, in the NY Times article, the author mentions in the third paragraph that "United States inspectors have tested fewer than 30,000 of the roughly 300 million animals slaughtered in the last nine years (for BSE), and they get results days or weeks later".

This also doesn't sound like a very thorough check to me.

[Fat Guy]

How many of those 1800 firms did the USDA actually check, or was it just a spot check here and there? Or was it self reported?

None. The inspections are the responsibility of the FDA, not the USDA. The FDA uses state inspectors operating under contract and, according to an FDA statement from 2002, "With state feed inspectors, whom the FDA has under contract to help with these inspections, the FDA has completed initial inspections of all known animal renderers and commercial feed mills."

Also, to be clear, if a firm is not in compliance with the regulations, that does not necessarily mean there is boving tissue in the feed. Non-compliance can be the result of improper paperwork, insufficient labeling, general cleanliness violations, etc.

As Jeff points out, mad cow disease has a fairly long incubation period. It is simply impossible for current violations to be causally related to the case that was detected. Assuming tainted feed actually is the cause of this case, we can say with some certainty that the hypothetical tainted feed was consumed by the cow in question sometime between 1995 and 2000. We can also knock out all the years prior to 2000, because we know this cow was 4 years old when it was slaughtered a few weeks ago. The regulations forbidding the addition of bovine protein to feed kicked in during 1997, and compliance has improved steadily to the point where today we are very close to 100%. So, as Jeff again indicates, assuming all the theoretical propositions about how the disease is transmitted, it's certainly possible that we will see more cases emerge in the tests. However, I think there aren't many cows alive today who were alive prior to 1997, so even if we do see additional cases chances are it will be a blip and we will see a reversal of the trend rather than an epidemic. We have probably missed the highest risk period, when most of the pre-1997 cows were being slaughtered around 1999-2001. Someone with farming knowledge can perhaps help out by giving us an idea of the typical range of slaughter ages.

On a related note, in the NY Times article, the author mentions in the third paragraph that "United States inspectors have tested fewer than 30,000 of the roughly 300 million animals slaughtered in the last nine years (for BSE), and they get results days or weeks later".

This also doesn't sound like a very thorough check to me.

It's about 50 times as thorough as the international organizations tasked with setting the standards for this sort of thing recommend for a nation where no case of mad cow has ever been detected:

Dr. John Maas, of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, said that under standards set by the World Organization for Animal Health, a nongovernmental group with 165 member nations, only 430 or so animals would have to be tested to properly monitor for the disease in the United States.

-- LA Times, Dec. 25, 2003

[Fat Guy]

Well-written piece from the AP analyzing the election implications:

At the same time that Bush has to deal with the concerns of the beef industry, he also has to address consumer fears.

The critical question of whether U.S. consumers will remain loyal to beef products "depends quite critically on how the government and industry handle this issue," said Derrell Peel, an agriculture economist at Oklahoma State University.

The single discovery of mad cow disease in this country may turn out to be an isolated case, a situation that would not cause widespread panic and the destruction of many cattle herds, University of Texas political scientist Bruce Buchanan said.

"The way it could become a political issue is the potential for consumer panic, especially if they find more cows," Buchanan said.

-- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor..._cow_politics_7

[alacarte]

I read today that the Washington "mad cow" is a DAIRY cow, not a beef cow. So much of the swearing-off-steak may be premature.

[Fat Guy]

Alacarte, dairy cows get eaten too. They just don't tend to become USDA Choice and Prime steaks. But the big hamburger chains and institutional food producers get much of their meat from dairy cows who have outlived their usefulness as milk producers.

"About half of all beef produced from cull dairy cows is processed and merchandised as whole muscle cuts for value added food favorites like fajitas, Philly steaks, deli and fast-food roast beef, marinated specialty items, economy steaks, and more." http://capitaldairy.cas.psu.edu/Column/200...ef_Business.pdf

[alacarte]

I learn something new every day...

[mrbigjas]

A joke from a couple years ago:

So this cow says to another cow: "I'm really freaked out about this whole mad cow disease." "I'm not worried in the slightest," says the other cow.

"But it's breaking out all over and they're slaughtering hundreds and thousands in Europe. How can you not be worried?" the first cow protests.

"Well, it's not going to affect me," says the second cow. "I'm a duck."

[tryska]

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?

yay Chaos Theory!

re: dairy cows as meat - all those big poly bags of meat bits should be held suspect, btw.

[Fat Guy]

I'm not sure the law of unintended consequences has anything to do with chaos theory. Mostly, the law of unintended consequences comes up in the literature to explain why well-intended government action is so often a bad idea. I would think, in this discussion, the law of unintended consequences would bear most directly on all the regulatory schemes that will now be demanded as a result of the discovery of this case of mad cow disease in the US. Billions of lost dollars, and the loss of many peoples' livelihoods, may be the unintended consequences.