June 1, 2002 Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO) by Lou Kilzer
Shortly after mad cow disease was first detected in the British countryside in 1986, officials stampeded to the microphones to assure the public that there was no risk to human health.
Ten years later, they admitted they had been wrong.
With the emergence of a similar disease in Colorado elk and deer, official response, based on available science, echoes the early years of mad cow: Chronic wasting disease poses little risk to humans.
As recently as April, Mike Miller, the veterinarian spearheading Colorado's effort to contain the disease, lamented that the public's concern about CWD as a human health threat was "misguided." He said there is no evidence that chronic wasting disease in deer and elk will infect humans. "It just seems that it is not at all likely" that humans could get the disease, he said.
But new federally sponsored research and two small clusters of a disease rarely seen in young people have other scientists concerned that Miller might be overly optimistic.
Response to mad cow in Great Britain and the United States was flawed. Consider:
After disease detectives in Great Britain determined that mad cow, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), was spread by feeding cattle infected meal, British officials banned the practice - in their own country. But they didn't ban the export of the feed around the globe, spreading BSE and causing economic devastation in continental Europe and Japan.
It took the United States 10 years to follow Britain's lead and ban the feeding of cattle-derived meat and bone meal (MBM) back to cattle. But the U.S. allows - indeed, actively promotes - the export of MBM to other countries. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) makes no requirement that warning labels against feeding it to cattle be placed on the product.
One country that exports over a million cattle a year to the United States - Mexico - is just now adopting the ban on MBM as cattle feed. And the enforcement of that ban is suspect.
The FDA has allowed hundreds of meat-processing facilities to fudge on its MBM rules, handing out a handful of warning letters and taking little action to force compliance.
The FDA asked pharmaceutical companies to stop using bovine serum in children's vaccines. For seven years it allowed the companies to ignore its request.
