Feds drop ball on mad-cow precautions

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Feds drop ball on mad-cow precautions

January 1, 2004 Denver Post By Diane Carman

 

My friends in Oregon were on a meat-eating frenzy when we arrived last week.

Recent converts to the Atkins Diet, they were subsisting nearly exclusively on

livestock products.

 

Three meals a day of bacon, eggs, sausage, beef, poultry, fried pork rinds and

endless dairy products were served as conversations revolved around two

subjects: Mad cow and what I'd give for a baked potato right now.

 

They are not unusual. It seems the whole country has gone carnivore.

 

And many of the same folks who cling to the belief that a meat-heavy diet will

make them thin are just as blithely putting their faith in government officials

who dismiss mad cow as merely a case of media hysteria.

 

But John Stauber begs to differ.

 

Stauber is an investigative writer, executive director of the Center for Media

and Democracy and co-author of the 1997 book " Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare

Happen Here? " He also is a harsh critic of policies that he believes guaranteed

an influx of mad cow-tainted meat into the U.S. food supply.

 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture knew at least as far back as 1991 what needed

to be done to prevent mad cow in the U.S. and didn't do it, he said. " Our book

is really a case study in how a deadly emerging disease was managed as a PR

problem rather than a serious global threat. "

 

The reason measures were not taken to protect the food supply, he said, was that

the agribusiness lobbyists pressured Congress not to impose the necessary

regulations.

 

So the same folks who pooh-poohed the reforms of the accounting industry that

might have prevented the corporate ripoffs that began in the late '90s, decided

the precautions imposed in Britain after the mad-cow outbreak there were too

much for the shareholders in the American meat industry to bear.

 

The so-called " fire wall " protecting American consumers from contaminated meat

is " a farce, " Stauber said. " The obfuscation and spin coming from the USDA is

amazing. "

 

Last July, the House defeated a bill that would have prohibited the slaughter of

" downed animals. " It was defeated because it would cost farmers money. This was

despite testimony that a Canadian cow found to have mad cow disease in May was a

" downer " and clearly demonstrated the risk of allowing sick animals to enter the

food supply.

 

Before that, back in 1997, the USDA chose not to ban from the market animal

feeds containing animal byproducts, a known cause of the spread of mad cow

disease. Instead, it required that all such animal feeds containing animal

byproducts be labeled as not appropriate for ruminants - cattle, sheep, etc.

 

" All it was was a labeling regulation, " Stauber said, " it's not a ban. And even

at that it is widely ignored and poorly enforced. "

 

Beyond that, Stauber said, blood products were exempt from the regulations, and

the use of animal formulas containing blood plasma from slaughterhouses is

common on dairy operations where farmers wean calves early to maximize the

amount of milk available for sale. " An ocean of blood is being fed to farm

animals, " he said.

 

While little is known about its diet, the animal found to be infected with mad

cow last month was a downer from a dairy herd in Washington state.

 

Further, the suggestion that this is a unique, isolated case of mad cow from

Canada is preposterous, Stauber said. " The FDA said back in 1997 that by the

time we saw one case of mad cow in the U.S. - even if there were an effective

feed ban in place, which there isn't - over the next 11 years because of the

invisible latency period we could expect to see 299,000 more cases, " he said.

 

John Stencel, president of the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, a network of family

farmers and ranchers, shares Stauber's concern. He said animal byproducts are

likely still found in livestock feed on Colorado farms despite the link with mad

cow. " There are people we find who don't even know " of the danger, he said.

" They may be using some of that feed just because it's available. "

 

Stencel, who worked at the USDA in the 1990s, said he saw how budgets for hiring

livestock inspectors were cut year after year and how enforcement of existing

regulations was compromised.

 

" Many people said we'd never see mad cow in the U.S., but I knew that day would

come, " he said.

 

And it's not over yet.

 

" Down the road, we're going to see people dying of mad cow " in the human form,

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Stauber said. " That's when consumer outrage is going

to really kick in " and meaningful regulation might finally come.

 

Until then, Stauber said, we can expect to see the USDA focus its energy on

damage control, spin and " smearing its critics. "

 

And in the meantime, that means consumers are on their own.

 

So I'll be the one eating the potatoes.

 

Diane Carman's column appears Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail:

dcarman.

 

 

 

 

 

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