U.S. Government Has Yet to Put Proper Mad Cow Disease Safeguards in Place |
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August 11, 2005
By Michael Greger, M.D.
The first U.S. case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow disease) was discovered on December 23, 2003 in the infamous "cow who ruined Christmas." Within a month of that discovery, the U.S. government released a package of regulations designed to protect the American public.
"Today we are bolstering our BSE firewalls to protect the public," the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's commissioner said on January 26, 2004, just 34 days after a downed cow in Washington State was diagnosed with mad cow disease. The FDA promised to ban the practice of weaning calves on cattle blood protein, and to stop the potentially risky practice of feeding cows the manure of chickens who had been fed slaughterhouse waste from cattle.
According to The New York Times, the FDA commissioner said the new rules would actually take effect "in a few days," meaning as soon as they were published in the Federal Register and the ban was made official. The move was hailed by then Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson as "a giant step forward." Consumer groups offered cautious praise. Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, said, "This is long, long overdue. I wonder whether it's too little too late."
It turns out it was nothing at all. The FDA never even published the rules, saying it needed more time to study the issues. The FDA's inaction has allowed U.S. animal agribusiness industries to continue their risky practices. The "few days" has turned into more than 18 months and counting.
A Public Betrayal
The delay has been widely criticized by a slew of organizations, including humane and consumer groups. "This is a betrayal of a promise made to consumers to protect their health," according to Jean Halloran of Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports. Carol Tucker-Foreman of the Consumer Federation of America called the delay "inexplicable and irresponsible."
Referring to the "mysteriously disappearing rules," Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest said, "They [the FDA] have been studying this action since 2002, so the idea that we need more study prior to taking such commonsense action seems absurd."
Yet the president of the American Meat Institute Foundation, which represents the meat and poultry industry and has supported the FDA's inaction, claims: "[T]here needs to be a risk-benefit analysis and cost-benefit analysis."
"It's just a lot of talk," says Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), a senior member of the House. "It's a lot of talk, a lot of press releases, and no action."
Downed...But Not Completely Out
One key element of the federal response to America's first confirmed case of mad cow disease was the U.S. Department of Agriculture's ban on meat from cattle too sick or injured to even stand—animals known as "downers"—in the human food supply.
The majority of BSE cases recently found in the European Union and Switzerland were downers, and every single one of the six confirmed cases of mad cow disease in North America have reportedly been downers as well.
But the USDA ban on downer meat is still just a proposed interim rule, and has yet to be made permanent or extended to other livestock. Making matters worse, the USDA earlier this year signaled plans to weaken the ban. In a March 1, 2005, interview, and in similar remarks on April 15, 2005, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns revealed that the USDA was considering backpedaling on the downer ban. "Let's say in the transport of an animal, the animal breaks its leg," former Nebraska Governor Johanns told a reporter. "Everybody agrees that there is no risk whatsoever. You have an animal with a broken leg."
Well, not everyone. Many consumer groups, farmers, physicians, veterinarians, animal protection groups, legislators, and even major retailers like McDonald's® and Wendy's® disagree.
Dr. Linda Detwiler was until recently the senior staff veterinarian in charge of the USDA's BSE surveillance program, and is now retired after 20 years with the agency. In written comments submitted to the USDA, she strongly opposed any attempt to weaken the definition of "downer" to exclude those downed presumably solely from injury. "I urge the USDA to not alter this definition," she wrote, "and to continue to prohibit for human food any bovine which cannot walk to the 'knock box' [slaughter area] regardless of reason."
She and others have noted that because illness may predispose an animal to injury, the underlying cause of the nonambulatory condition may be impossible to ascertain. In other words, a broken leg might just be a symptom of a more serious problem, like BSE. This is clearly illustrated by the fact that at least three out of the six cows diagnosed with mad cow disease in North America have been identified as downers due to injuries, not illness.
The first mad cow discovered in Canada was thought to be "suffering from a broken leg." The first mad cow discovered in the United States similarly didn’t seem to display any BSE symptoms. Rather, a USDA veterinarian reported that the cow was downed due to a birthing injury (through genetic manipulation many calves are oversized, which can result in difficult births). She was seemingly picked at random out of the less than 2% of downer cows tested for mad cow disease in the United States up until that time.
The reason the infected cow in the United States was approved for human consumption and not condemned, even though she was being tested for mad cow disease, was precisely because she was suspected of injury, not sickness.
Similarly, the latest confirmed mad cow in Canada was presumed downed not because she was infected with the brain-wasting disease but, once again, strictly because of apparent injury. The farmer "didn’t suspect anything was seriously wrong when one of his cows slipped on the ice and hurt itself," according to news accounts. Under the proposed backpedaling of the downer ban, infected meat from such animals would again be made into hamburger.
The Case Against Downers
Excluding all downer animals—and not just cows—from the food supply is crucial, regardless the reason for the animal's immobility. As the United Kingdom tragically learned in the early 1990s, consumption of BSE-infected animal products can cause the inevitably fatal human form of BSE, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The danger may not be limited to eating cows either; other farm animals such as pigs and sheep have been shown to be susceptible to mad cow infection, and could pass the brain-wasting disease to consumers of their flesh. Consumers could face other risks, too, from eating downer animals. Studies show that downers are much more likely to harbor conventional—and sometimes deadly—pathogens such as E. coli and salmonella, perhaps because lame animals are more likely to be contaminated with fecal matter.
Then there's the animal welfare side to the downer issue. Moving nonambulatory livestock to slaughter causes terrible suffering—maybe even more so in cases involving broken limbs. Downed animals should not be dragged to slaughter, but should be humanely euthanized and put out of their misery. A comprehensive downer ban removes the economic incentive to keep these suffering animals alive for human consumption. Moreover, it encourages producers to improve handling practices to prevent the animals from becoming disabled in the first place.
For these reasons, and more, The HSUS and Farm Sanctuary decided on July 8 that they could wait no longer for the USDA to do the right thing. They filed a legal petition with the agency urging the USDA to make permanent the ban on downed cattle in the human food supply.
"A permanent and extensive ban on downed animals in the human food supply should once and for all put an end to the routine practice of kicking downed animals, dragging them with chains, shocking them with electric prods, and pushing them with bulldozers in efforts to move them at auction and slaughter facilities," says Miyun Park, director of The HSUS's Farm Animal Welfare section. "These practices only compound the pain they already suffer as a result of injury and illness."
USDA's Contradictory Stance on Downers
For years meat from downer cattle has been excluded from the National School Lunch Program, for fear of bacterial infections. In summer 2000, the USDA's Agriculture Marketing Service announced that in purchasing beef for school lunches, "USDA will no longer accept ground beef that includes product from nonambulatory cattle, commonly known as 'downers'."
Our government realized this meat was too risky to feed to kids at school, but it apparently wasn’t concerned about that meat being fed to kids or adults at restaurants or at home. The USDA itself has explicitly made clear that "even a diseased animal...may be inspected and passed for human food."
The safety of the American food supply with regard to BSE will remain in question until the United States follows the guidelines set forth by the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and enacts science-based safeguards proven to work in Europe. These include a permanent ban on allowing any downer livestock into the food supply; a total ban on the feeding of slaughterhouse waste, blood, and excrement to farmed animals; and dramatically increased surveillance for this brain-wasting disease.
What You Can Do
Contact Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns and politely urge him to make the downer ban permanent. Also urge him to extend it to other animals to protect them from undue suffering and to protect the American food supply.
If you have a few more minutes, also urge the Food and Drug Administration to ban feeding blood, slaughterhouse waste, and animal waste to farm animals.
Michael Greger, M.D. is The HSUS's Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture.
See the Video
Downed Animals
Related Links
Don't Allow Agriculture Secretary Johanns to Backpedal on the USDA Downer Ban
Industry Backpedals on Mad Cow but Public Support for Downer Ban Is Clear
Testing Alone Can't Protect Us from Mad Cow Disease; Urge the USDA to Make the Downer Ban Permanent
