How now mad cow?

[Guest guest]

http://organicconsumers.org/madcow/times21604.cfm

 

How now mad cow?

February 16, 2004 In These Times by Joel Bleifuss

 

The unfolding story of mad cow disease follows an all-too-familiar and damning

pattern. A threat to public health is discovered, the affected industries and

their allies in government respond with a public relations campaign, the

evidence mounts and some reforms are implemented. This is followed by more

evidence and more reforms. Yet nowhere in this scenario have the federal

agencies charged with protecting public health -- the Food and Drug

Administration (FDA), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Centers

for Disease Control and Prevention -- taken proactive steps to remedy the

situation. Rather, they have operated in the interests of huge agriculture and

food lobbies.

Since 1993, I have devoted numerous... [columns] to mad cow and related

diseases. Nearly every prediction -- and warning -- from scientists who are

experts in this field has come to pass. Yet, by and large, the mainstream media

have chosen to listen to the palliative pronouncements of government officials

and industry flacks. With mad cow disease now established in the United States

that may be changing.

Mad cow, first discovered in Great Britain in 1985, is a type of malady known as

transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). The disease gets its name from

the sponge-like formations that occur in the brains of infected mammals. The

sheep form of the disease, which has been recognized since 1755, is known as

scrapie. In Britain, cattle contracted mad cow disease, known as Bovine

Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), by eating protein feed supplements that

contained scrapie-infected sheep.

The human strain of TSE comes in several forms, including Creutzfeldt-Jacob

disease (CJD), Kuru (a TSE that several decades ago plagued a population of New

Guinea cannibals before changes in dietary laws), and new variant CJD (nvCJD),

the form of the disease that comes from eating infected cattle.

The USDA has long known that mad cow disease posed a threat. However, department

officials were worried about danger to the industry -- not the public. In 1991,

the USDA prepared contingency plans to deal with the possibility that mad cow

disease could rear its ugly head in the United States. To wit, it drew up a

strategy paper titled " BSE Public Relations. " That plan reads in part, " The mere

perception that BSE might exist in the United States could have devastating

effects on our domestic markets for beef and dairy. " And it noted that the

agricultural industry is " vulnerable to media scrutiny " regarding " the practice

of feeding rendered ruminant products to ruminants and the risk to human health "

that might stem from this practice. Mad cows in America

To all indications, and contrary to recent news reports, an American strain of

BSE has long been circulating through the food chain. In 1985, a Stentsonville,

Wisconsin, mink ranch was wiped out by transmissible mink encephalopathy. The

diet of the mink consisted of 5 percent horsemeat and 95 percent " downer cows "

-- cows so lame they fall down and are unable to get up.

Could one of those downer cows fed to the mink have been infected with an

American strain of BSE? In December 1992, the late Richard Marsh, a veterinary

scientist at the University of Wisconsin, reported on experiments in Mission,

Texas, and Ames, Iowa, where brain matter from scrapie-infected American sheep

was injected into the brains of cows. The infected cows developed BSE, but their

symptoms differed from the mad cow disease that was plaguing Europe. In May

1993, Marsh told me, " The signs that these cattle showed were not the widely

recognized signs of BSE -- not signs of mad cow disease. What they showed was

what you might expect from a downer cow. " In other words, BSE-infected cattle in

Europe went mad before dying, but BSE-infected cows in the United States simply

fell down and died. Each year in the United States about 150,000 cattle suffer

from downer cow syndrome. Those downer cows that made it out of the pasture

alive ended up in the slaughterhouse and into the food

chain. Until 1996, when the practice was banned by the USDA, the slaughterhouse

remains of at least 14 percent of all cattle, including downer cows, were

rendered into protein and fed back to other cows as feed supplements. What's

more, the meat from these tough and old downer cows usually ended up in

fast-food hamburgers and other highly processed meat products -- that is until

the slaughter of downer cows was halted by Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman on

December 30, 2003.

" The USDA tends to respond to commodity groups rather than the consumer. And the

government hasn't taken any measures to restrict what goes into animal feed, "

Marsh said in 1993. " The Center for Veterinary Medicine at the FDA would have to

make the recommendation not to feed ruminant animals to cattle, but we can't get

them to do this. "

In 1996, the USDA belatedly decided it was time to stop feeding the rendered

protein from ruminants (cows, sheep and deer) to other ruminants. The department

had considered implementing such policies in 1991 but decided not to because

such regulations " could pose major problems for the U.S. livestock, feed and

rendering industry, " according to " BSE Rendering Policies, " an internal 1991

USDA report.

The impetus for this ban was the breaking news in Britain that some people,

mostly young, were beginning to die agonizing deaths from a new kind of CJD

(nvCJD), the cause of which, as the British government acknowledged, was

consumption of mad cow meat. The British Ministry of Health discovered this new

form of the disease because it had set up a registry for CJD.

However in the United States, the USDA, in its " BSE Public Relations " plan,

advised the department to " avoid the public relations problems such as have

occurred in the U.K., " such as setting up a registry of CJD cases that " appeared

to legitimize concern about a link between BSE and human health. " Variable

symptoms

In the last three years, studies have suggested that classical CJD might be

caused by eating BSE-infected cattle, according to a recent report by Todd

Hartman in the Rocky Mountain News.

In Great Britain, scientists injected BSE into mice whose brains were

genetically engineered with human genes. While some of the mice developed nvCJD,

the kind people get from eating mad cows, other mice came down with classical

CJD. In their November 2002 report, the scientists wrote, " This finding has

important potential implications as it raises the possibility that some humans

infected with [mad cow disease] may develop a clinical diseases

indistinguishable from classical CJD. " And in 2003, French scientists discovered

that scrapie, the sheep TSE, caused brain damage in mice similar to that of

classical CJD.

Hartman writes, " The two studies suggest that at least some of the hundreds of

Americans who contract classical CJD each year could have been infected by

BSE-contaminated meat, and not simply by biological bad luck. "

How common CJD in its various forms is in the United States is unclear. Some

medical experts believe that the incidence of CJD in the U.S. population is much

higher than the commonly assumed 1 per million. A 1989 study at the University

of Pittsburgh examined the case histories of 54 demented patients who, upon

their death, were autopsied at the University of Pittsburgh. The study

discovered that 39 (72 percent) of the patients had Alzheimer's; 15 (27.7

percent) had central nervous system disorders; and three (5.5 percent) had CJD.

The researchers concluded that the three cases of CJD turned up in their study

" had a much longer course than is usually seen with that condition and failed

[when the patient was alive] to show the usual EEG abnormalities. " In other

words, the CJD cases discovered in Pittsburgh exhibited symptoms that were more

compatible with Alzheimer's disease than classical CJD.

A 1989 Yale University study reported similar findings. Postmortem examination

of 46 patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's revealed that six (13 percent)

actually had CJD.

The Pittsburgh and Yale studies point to the possibility that some of the 4

million people in the United States suffering form Alzheimer's may actually be

infected with the agent that causes CJD. And that raises this question: Has an

unrecognized from of BSE infected U.S. cattle and entered the human food chain?

Bolstering this concern is a report from the Philadelphia Inquirer that seven

people in New Jersey have died from classical CJD, all of whom ate at the same

racetrack in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

The scope of CJD incidence in humans is further complicated by the fact that a

deer form of mad cow disease, known as chronic wasting disease, is endemic in

parts of Wyoming, Colorado and Wisconsin. At least two young hunters who ate and

dressed deer have come down with CJD. And a third, a young woman who ate venison

from a deer shot in Maine, also contracted the disease. Because CJD is

overwhelmingly a disease of the old, the young age of the current victims raises

the strong possibility that they contracted the disease through eating deer

suffering from chronic wasting disease.

In 1999, Paul Brown, an expert on TSE at the National Institutes of Health, told

John Stauber, author of Mad Cow U.S.A., that deer hunters must be out of their

minds to be consuming deer in areas where chronic wasting disease is prevalent.

That health warning, however, has not been given to the general public. " The

failure of state and federal agencies to take swift action and warn hunters

about potential risks of chronic wasting disease is inexcusable, " Stauber said

at the time.

Why the silence? One reason could be that state wildlife departments are heavily

dependent on income derived from licenses for big game. The Colorado Wildlife

Division maintains that chronic wasting disease does not affect humans. Yet at

the same time it advises hunters to " wear rubber gloves when field dressing

carcasses, minimize handling of brain and spinal column and wash hands

afterwards " -- and then go home and feast on venison, though not the " brain,

spinal cord, eyes, spleen and lymph nodes of harvested animals. "

 

ORganic Consumers Association

6101 Cliff Estate Rd, Little Marais, MN 55614

E-mail:Staff · Activist or Media Inquiries: 218-226-4164 · Fax: 218-353-7652

Please support our work. Send a tax-deductible donation to the OCA

 

 

 

 

 

 

SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!