When a single cow with mad cow disease was discovered in Hokkaido, the sale of beef products plummeted. Housewives instantly not only stopped buying from the butcher and the plastic-wrapped cuts in suupaa but also stopped purchasing items that contained miniscule amounts of beef bits such as cosmetics. Yakiniku restaurants sat forlorn, shorn of customers. All of this was reasonable behavior in light of the gravity of the exposure associated human disease vCJD.
In contrast, when BSE was discovered in Washington state, no large, nationwide social group acted in instant unison to stop its consumption of beef products. Consumer confidence was never shaken, as it was instantly in Japan. Some smaller activist groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA, www.peta.org) did put on campaigns; PETA is using BSE’s appearance in the U.S. to push for vegan diets with a “It’s mad to eat meat” campaign. Their website www.goveg.com has some amusing posters, including ones featuring the slogan “If the cow doesn’t get you, I might. It’s mad to eat any meat.“ Another activist group, the Organic Consumers Association (www.organicconsumers.org), has been up in arms about BSE, and has a fine collection of BSE articles on its website.
Japan has so far steadfastly insisted that all cattle from the U.S. simply be tested before being sent to Japan — certainly a fair and reasonable request in light of the fact that Japan requires all of its own cattle to be tested also. In the fascinating saga of Creekstone Farm’s quixotic attempt to test their own cattle, (www.creekstonefarmspremiumbeef.com) the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has refused to allow them to do so in topsy-turvy Wickard v. Filburn fashion (if you are not familiar with this 1942 Supreme Court decision, a farmer named Filburn was ruled not to have right to feed wheat that he had grown to his own hogs.) In Creekstone's generous-to-a-fault letter to the USDA, they outline several options to go forward, some of which seem to be inadequate to resume sales to Japan. For Japan to accept imported beef that has had far less testing than its own will be hard to sell to the public — the easy solution is to simply meet the Japanese standards, which Creekstone has volunteered to do so. It is easy to predict that if the USDA’s strategy continues to try to convince Japan to accept U.S. beef without having complete testing, there will be many, many press releases along the line of 0274.04 in the future, and little action otherwise.
The USDA stance has been peculiar. (www.usda.gov) While the new standards that the USDA propagated on December 30th, 2003, are certainly a big step forward, take the June 29th statement from Release No. 0266.04: “In other words, our program could detect BSE even if there were only five positive animals in the target population in the entire country.” This seems cold comfort indeed; the USDA’s target is to be able detect if there are already five mad cattle going to slaughter — implying that they are willing to tolerate a low level of BSE infection in the United States. The goals of the USDA are not those of Japan: Japan wants to eradicate the disease; the USDA wants to reduce it, and protect the populace by good slaughtering practices. The American Meat Institute (AMI, www.meatami.com) puts it bluntly in their testing factsheet that consumers will be protected by the careful slaughter of each cow to avoid any possible contamination, not by the testing regimen. Many American consumers will not care for this, since some of the cuts that could be eliminated by such practice include the T-bone and the porterhouse cuts. Under a BSE regimen in Italy, even the famous and delectable bistecca alla fiorentina was forbidden.
The USDA’s testing plan of March 15th is even more worrisome — it explicitly makes the questionable assumption that all of the BSE positive cattle are in the high risk population where high risk is defined as cattle that are exhibiting some sort of symptom. This does not accord with the experience in Europe, where half the BSE detected is being found in cattle exhibiting no symptoms. This questionable assumption makes hash of the resulting high confidence levels assigned to the detection capabilities of the plan.
Our beef export industry, not to mention some number of domestic consumers, will be harmed by this policy. This “go slow” approach is in strong contrast with Japan’s own program to rapidly eradicate the disease and to restore confidence in its own beef industry. (Though in all fairness, it did take the Japanese government a few days to move the marker that far.) Since BSE is being detected in cattle that appear otherwise healthy in Europe, the USDA program of testing only downer cattle and just 20,000 healthy cattle seems to be inadequate.
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA, www.beef.org) have both the excellent www.beefitswhatisfordinner.com website (with a nice database of beef recipes) and the website www.bseinfo.org, which lays out the NCBA’s position on BSE. As producers in the industry, their stance is reasonable, responsible, and certainly well-informed. However, their logic with respect to testing all animals is tortuous. For instance, if the NCBA now endorses, as it indicates on their FAQ, the necessity of stopping feed practices such as the use of chicken litter as feed because the chickens might have been fed undetected but infected bone meal, then it would seem passing strange that they would not want to institute far more general detection measures to find these hitherto undetected bovine infections. Furthermore, it is a loss for the industry to forgo the use of chicken litter as cattle feed; it is inexpensive and has proven to be a good food source for cattle. For the NCBA to endorse this ban because of possible transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) tainted chicken litter indicates just how serious the problem may be. Nor is this as simple as it seems, since chicken litter is also used as fertilizer, introducing another conceivable class of admittedly more indirect transmissibility.
So what is the solution? It seems clear that if U.S. producers are to sell meat to Japan that they will have to institute 100% testing for the Japanese market. The American consumer deserves at least this much; the consumer would not find a Bodaiju solution to be palatable — and even the well-known Bodaiju restaurant in Mita has recently left the vegan fold.
In contrast, when BSE was discovered in Washington state, no large, nationwide social group acted in instant unison to stop its consumption of beef products. Consumer confidence was never shaken, as it was instantly in Japan. Some smaller activist groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA, www.peta.org) did put on campaigns; PETA is using BSE’s appearance in the U.S. to push for vegan diets with a “It’s mad to eat meat” campaign. Their website www.goveg.com has some amusing posters, including ones featuring the slogan “If the cow doesn’t get you, I might. It’s mad to eat any meat.“ Another activist group, the Organic Consumers Association (www.organicconsumers.org), has been up in arms about BSE, and has a fine collection of BSE articles on its website.
Japan has so far steadfastly insisted that all cattle from the U.S. simply be tested before being sent to Japan — certainly a fair and reasonable request in light of the fact that Japan requires all of its own cattle to be tested also. In the fascinating saga of Creekstone Farm’s quixotic attempt to test their own cattle, (www.creekstonefarmspremiumbeef.com) the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has refused to allow them to do so in topsy-turvy Wickard v. Filburn fashion (if you are not familiar with this 1942 Supreme Court decision, a farmer named Filburn was ruled not to have right to feed wheat that he had grown to his own hogs.) In Creekstone's generous-to-a-fault letter to the USDA, they outline several options to go forward, some of which seem to be inadequate to resume sales to Japan. For Japan to accept imported beef that has had far less testing than its own will be hard to sell to the public — the easy solution is to simply meet the Japanese standards, which Creekstone has volunteered to do so. It is easy to predict that if the USDA’s strategy continues to try to convince Japan to accept U.S. beef without having complete testing, there will be many, many press releases along the line of 0274.04 in the future, and little action otherwise.
The USDA stance has been peculiar. (www.usda.gov) While the new standards that the USDA propagated on December 30th, 2003, are certainly a big step forward, take the June 29th statement from Release No. 0266.04: “In other words, our program could detect BSE even if there were only five positive animals in the target population in the entire country.” This seems cold comfort indeed; the USDA’s target is to be able detect if there are already five mad cattle going to slaughter — implying that they are willing to tolerate a low level of BSE infection in the United States. The goals of the USDA are not those of Japan: Japan wants to eradicate the disease; the USDA wants to reduce it, and protect the populace by good slaughtering practices. The American Meat Institute (AMI, www.meatami.com) puts it bluntly in their testing factsheet that consumers will be protected by the careful slaughter of each cow to avoid any possible contamination, not by the testing regimen. Many American consumers will not care for this, since some of the cuts that could be eliminated by such practice include the T-bone and the porterhouse cuts. Under a BSE regimen in Italy, even the famous and delectable bistecca alla fiorentina was forbidden.
The USDA’s testing plan of March 15th is even more worrisome — it explicitly makes the questionable assumption that all of the BSE positive cattle are in the high risk population where high risk is defined as cattle that are exhibiting some sort of symptom. This does not accord with the experience in Europe, where half the BSE detected is being found in cattle exhibiting no symptoms. This questionable assumption makes hash of the resulting high confidence levels assigned to the detection capabilities of the plan.
Our beef export industry, not to mention some number of domestic consumers, will be harmed by this policy. This “go slow” approach is in strong contrast with Japan’s own program to rapidly eradicate the disease and to restore confidence in its own beef industry. (Though in all fairness, it did take the Japanese government a few days to move the marker that far.) Since BSE is being detected in cattle that appear otherwise healthy in Europe, the USDA program of testing only downer cattle and just 20,000 healthy cattle seems to be inadequate.
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA, www.beef.org) have both the excellent www.beefitswhatisfordinner.com website (with a nice database of beef recipes) and the website www.bseinfo.org, which lays out the NCBA’s position on BSE. As producers in the industry, their stance is reasonable, responsible, and certainly well-informed. However, their logic with respect to testing all animals is tortuous. For instance, if the NCBA now endorses, as it indicates on their FAQ, the necessity of stopping feed practices such as the use of chicken litter as feed because the chickens might have been fed undetected but infected bone meal, then it would seem passing strange that they would not want to institute far more general detection measures to find these hitherto undetected bovine infections. Furthermore, it is a loss for the industry to forgo the use of chicken litter as cattle feed; it is inexpensive and has proven to be a good food source for cattle. For the NCBA to endorse this ban because of possible transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) tainted chicken litter indicates just how serious the problem may be. Nor is this as simple as it seems, since chicken litter is also used as fertilizer, introducing another conceivable class of admittedly more indirect transmissibility.
So what is the solution? It seems clear that if U.S. producers are to sell meat to Japan that they will have to institute 100% testing for the Japanese market. The American consumer deserves at least this much; the consumer would not find a Bodaiju solution to be palatable — and even the well-known Bodaiju restaurant in Mita has recently left the vegan fold.