Feds Unable to Pin Down Source of Mad Cow

[Guest guest]

( " We dun't know nuttin " they all piped in unison while smiling broadly.)

 

 

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5244790,00.html

 

Feds Unable to Pin Down Source of Mad Cow

 

 

Wednesday August 31, 2005 4:46 AM

 

By LIBBY QUAID

 

Associated Press Writer

 

WASHINGTON (AP) - The government closed its investigation into the

nation's first domestic case of mad cow disease Tuesday, saying it

could not pin down how a Texas cow was infected with the brain-wasting

ailment.

 

Officials continue to believe the 12-year-old Brahma cross cow ate

contaminated feed before the United States banned ground-up cattle

remains in cattle feed.

 

The only way the disease is known to spread is through eating brain

and other nerve tissue from infected cows.

 

``The investigation did not identify a specific feed source as the

likely cause of this animal's infection,'' said Steve Sundlof,

director of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Veterinary

Medicine.

 

Sundlof said the most likely culprit was tainted feed eaten before the

1997 ban.

 

The Texas-born cow tested positive in June.

 

The feed ban has loopholes allowing cattle to be fed poultry litter,

cattle blood and restaurant leftovers, all potential pathways for mad

cow disease. FDA officials promised last year to close the loopholes;

Sundlof said the agency will act within the next two months.

 

The Agriculture Department and FDA said the investigation indicated

there was no danger to human or animal health. The investigation also

found:

 

- 21 types of feed or feed supplements were used since 1990 on the

cow's farm, which the government has not identified. Nine feed mills

and three retail feed stores supplied the feed ingredients.

 

- 147 herd mates and offspring were presumed to have been slaughtered

for food, feed or other use, and 21 could not be traced. USDA located,

killed and tested 67 animals, all of which tested negative for mad cow

disease. In all, the government traced 413 animals in its investigation.

 

Also Tuesday, officials agreed to let the industry run a nationwide

system of tracking the movements of cows, pigs and chickens from birth

to the dinner table.

 

The Agriculture Department had vowed to hustle the system into place

after discovering the nation's first case of mad cow disease in

December 2003 in an imported cow believed to have been infected in

Canada, where it was born.

 

The goal is to have a mandatory reporting and registration system that

would allow an animal to be traced within 48 hours after a disease is

discovered.

 

``It simply makes good sense for producers to design and maintain that

piece of the system,'' Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said. Many

cattle ranchers are wary of a government-run system and want their

records kept confidential.

 

The move was applauded by the dominant cattle ranchers' group, the

National Cattlemen's Beef Association, which is creating its own

tracking system and hopes the department will rely on it.

 

``Protection of producers' rights and confidentiality is a top

priority, and the industry is best equipped to do this,'' said Mike

John, a Missouri cattle producer and president-elect of the group.

 

Consumer groups and the National Farmers Union criticized the move.

The system ``should not be a revenue source for entities seeking to

make a profit,'' said farmers' union president Dave Frederickson.

 

An industry-run system is unlikely to reassure consumers in the U.S.

and abroad that their beef is safe, said Carol Tucker Foreman,

director of food policy at Consumer Federation of America.

 

The medical name for mad cow disease is bovine spongiform

encephalopathy, or BSE. In people, eating meat products contaminated

with BSE has been linked to about 150 deaths from a rare degenerative

disease called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

 

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