NEWS: Bush Administration Refuses to Adopt BSE Safeguards - CMD 06/13

[Guest guest]

[This is a couple weeks old -- but still relevant. -- ys hkdd]

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

JUNE 13, 2005 2:06 PM

 

CONTACT: Center for Media and Democracy:

Dr. Diane Farsetta or John Stauber 608-260-9713, 608-279-4044

Ronnie Cummins, Organic Consumers Association, 888-403-1007, 218-349-3836

 

** Despite Likely Second U.S. Mad Cow, the Bush Administration Refuses

to Adopt Necessary Safeguards **

 

Inadequate U.S. Policies Endanger Human Health: A Real "Firewall Feed

Ban" and Increased, Improved Animal Testing Must Be Implemented Immediately

 

WASHNGTON, DC - On Friday night, Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns

announced that a non-ambulatory beef cow that had twice tested positive

in November 2004 for mad cow disease with rapid tests...recently tested

positive for mad cow disease, using a more definitive Western Blot

technique.

 

The Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, urged

the USDA in January 2005 to re-test the suspect animal using Western

Blot, considered to be the most accurate test for mad cow disease.

Although the USDA says it will now send samples to Britain, further

testing is expected to confirm that this animal is the second case of

mad cow disease in the United States and the fifth in North America, in

two years. Various media have reported that the cow is from Texas.

 

"The mad cow testing and cattle feed regulations in the United States

are simply a sham," said Ronnie Cummins, National Director of the

Organic Consumers Association. "The USDA has never disclosed how the

relatively small number of U.S. cattle tested are actually chosen. The

United States refuses to conduct the food safety testing for mad cow

disease that protects consumers in the European Union and Japan, which

would require testing millions of U.S. cattle each year. The USDA has

also declared it is criminal for any private U.S. meat plants or beef

producers to test their own animals for mad cow disease. In effect, the

USDA is covering up mad cow in the United States through secretive,

inadequate testing and a lack of transparency."

 

Dr. Diane Farsetta, senior researcher for the Center for Media and

Democracy, noted, "The Bush administration refers to the current U.S.

cattle feed regulations as a 'firewall,' but they are more like pouring

gasoline on the fire....These dangerous feeding practices must be

banned, as they have been in Britain, Japan and other countries."

 

Mad cow, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), is an always-fatal

dementia disease spread through consumption of animal products, such as

the slaughterhouse waste fed to U.S. cattle. The infectious agent is a

type of protein named a prion {pree' on} by Nobel laureate Dr. Stanley

Prusiner. Dr. Prusiner has called for a total ban on feeding

slaughterhouse waste to cattle, along with testing all cattle at

slaughter to ensure food safety. However, the United States has refused

to take these measures.

 

Worldwide, nearly 160 people have died from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob

disease (vCJD), which is primarily caused by the consumption of mad

cow-infected meat. vCJD can incubate invisibly for decades. This long

incubation time, along with recent results from Britain identifying

silent vCJD "carriers," suggests that vCJD could be infecting thousands

of people who have yet to show symptoms. In addition, two people in

Britain died from vCJD after receiving blood transfusions from people

infected by mad cow-tainted meat. Britain no longer uses its own human

blood supply. Lax regulations mean that the U.S. blood supply is also at

risk.

 

"This latest U.S. mad cow case demonstrates how the USDA has been

effectively covering up the disease by failing to use the Western Blot

test and by failing to test millions of cattle a year," said John

Stauber, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy and

co-author of the book that predicted the emergence of the disease in the

United States, Mad Cow USA. "The Bush administration is putting the

livestock industry's desire to keep feeding cheap slaughterhouse waste

to cattle above the urgent need to protect human health and the human

blood supply. All feeding of slaughterhouse waste to livestock must be

banned. In addition, the USDA must allow private meat companies and

producers to test their cattle for mad cow disease. Private testing

would rescue foreign beef sales, give foreign and domestic consumers the

choice of buying meat tested free of mad cow disease, and would help

determine the real number of U.S. mad cow cases...."

 

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