Mike
Well-known member
Although this is an old article. We might look back and wonder if the USDA has been perpetuating a BSE coverup since the beginning. Especially when we look at their recent, almost childlike mistakes.
This article, from 2001, slams the "Gold Standard" tests which the USDA has FOUR YEARS LATER found to be insufficient in finding positives.
______________________________________________________________
USA Mad Cow Testing--A Deliberate Coverup?
USA Government Falls Short on Testing for Mad Cow--Is This A Coverup?
Compared to the actions taken by countries in the European Union, the
United States government does not seem to be aggressive enough in
protecting American consumers from bovine spongiform encelphalopathy (BSE),
commonly known as mad cow disease.
The type of testing methods now used in the U.S. have been shown to miss
prions detected by the more advanced testing methods employed in Europe. (A
prion is a microscopic protein particle similar to a virus but lacking
nucleic acid, thought to be the infectious agent responsible for BSE and
certain other degenerative diseases of the nervous system.)
Germany, which long proclaimed itself "BSE-free" using the same type of
testing the US currently utilizes, did not discover its first mad cow cases
until it began using the more sensitive testing procedures.
The U.S. currently uses Western Blot analyses, immunohistory chemistry, and
histopathology, which are more labor intensive and take longer than the
newer tests. They require removing a portion of the brain, growing a
culture, staining it with dye, and examining how the dye has interacted
with the culture.
The U.S. also is presently testing only 1 out of every 18,000 cows
slaughtered, whereas countries like Switzerland test 1 out of every 60
cows...
Dr. Marcus Doherr is a veterinarian epidemiologist at the University of
Bern, Switzerland, who received his Ph.D. from University of California at
Davis. He helped design the Swiss mad cow testing program, regarded by many
experts as the most advanced in the world.
Doherr says that if the U.S. has as high an incidence of mad cow as France,
for example, the current USDA testing program would not detect it. "They're
not testing enough animals," he says. "The USDA argues it's a good sample,
but it isn't representative of the population it is trying to extrapolate."
European countries have for some time been testing a far greater percentage
of their cattle. And unlike the U.S., European countries are now testing
animals which are headed into their food chain. The U.S. is currently
testing a tiny number of "downer cows," cows which are selected for testing
visually by USDA inspectors because of obvious illness.
Dr. Linda Detwiler, a veterinarian who chairs the BSE Working Group at the
U.S. Department of Agricuture, defends current U.S. testing, asserting it
is adequate to detect mad cow if it is in the U.S. "We are targeting fallen
stock, and we know it's best to target those cows because in Switzerland,
the country with the greatest scientific experience with spotting the
disease, they found all their BSE cases in fallen stock, and none in
testing animals going into the Swiss food chain."
Actually, that's not entirely correct. Dr. Markus Moser, a molecular
biologist and guest researcher at Oxford University in England, heads the
Swiss company Prionics, which developed a rapid-response test for BSE,
called the Prionics Check Test. The Check Test costs about $40 per cow, and
Moser says it has found cases of mad cow in tests of "healthy" cattle which
otherwise would have entered the food chain.
Moser does agree with Detwiler that BSE has been found in significantly
higher percentages in fallen stock, making it reasonable to focus initial
testing there. However, you can't compare the current U.S. testing to
testing done in Europe, he says. The reason is because the U.S. has a very
different definition of "fallen stock" than the Europeans.
"In Europe," says Moser, "'fallen stock' refers to any cow not regularly
slaughtered, which gets sick or dies, breaks its leg and is destroyed, or
doesn't go into the food chain for any number of reasons. No such cows can
be disposed of in Europe without being tested for BSE."
But in the U.S., the term "fallen stock" appears to refer only to cattle
that actually arrive at the slaughterhouse and are so obviously sick that
they are pulled out of the line by a USDA inspector. "Who would bring a
sick animal to an abattoir that they knew was going to be pulled out?" says
Moser.
In fact, U.S. ranchers can dispose of sick cattle in a number of ways, such
as selling them to rendering plants to be turned into animal food. Unlike
Europe, the U.S. does not have the same laws insuring these fallen cattle
are not disposed of without testing first for BSE.
Dr. Mike O'Connor is another expert who believes U.S. policy could be
improved. O'Connor is a founder and the Technical Director of Enfer
Scientific, in Dublin, Ireland. His company developed the Enfer
rapid-response test for mad cow disease, now widely used in the UK and
Europe.
"It's illegal to bury casualty cattle in Ireland," says O'Connor. "You
can't just dispose of them however you want. They must be tested. That
obviously doesn't happen in the U.S."
Dr. Dagmar Heim, the head of Switzerland's BSE testing and surveillance
unit, points to the most dramatic illustration showing the difference
between European and U.S. definitions of "downer cows." It's the number of
cows the U.S. counts as "fallen" versus the number Europe identifies.
In Switzerland, she says, some 14,000 cows were identified and tested last
year as "high risk/fallen" out of a total of about 800,000 slaughtered. By
comparison, the US identified and tested only about 2,000 "fallen cattle"
-- out of a total 36 million slaughtered here.
That's a difference between 1.75% of all cows in Switzerland being
identified and tested as fallen cows, and .0056% (five-thousands of one
percent) of all U.S. cows being identified as "downers" and tested.
If the USDA used the same "fallen cattle" definition as Europe and ended up
testing 1.75% of its cattle for mad cow disease - as the Swiss do - the
U.S. would be testing about 630,000 cows per year, rather than the 2,303
cows tested last year.
Moser says the USDA's claim that it is testing what the Swiss have
identified as a "high risk group" - fallen cattle - is not accurate.
"You're testing a very small sub-population of what Europe looks at, a tiny
fraction of what we consider to be 'fallen cattle.' It's not the same at
all."
Best mad cow disease test is "made in the USA" - but not used here
According to a study published in 1999 in the scientific journal Nature,
the most sensitive mad cow test produced to date is made by a company
called Bio-Rad, with headquarters in Hercules, California, near San
Francisco. In 1998, the European Union formed a commission to evaluate mad
cow tests, and the result was a joint effort between the French Atomic
Energy Comission and Bio-Rad, which developed and in 2000 began marketing a
test called Platelia BSE. Bio-Rad CFO, Tom Chesterman, says their rapid
response mad cow test costs $17 per cow, with some 600,000 tests having
been sold in Europe since the beginning of the year.
Two other tests reviewed in the Nature study were also shown to be highly
effective; Dr. Moser's Prionics Check Test, and Dr. O'Connor's Enfer. All
three tests are designed to provide quick response times, enabling meat
packers to test animals and get results back before slaughtered carcasses
in the plant's "chill room" reach 4 degrees Centigrade, the temperature at
which they can be loaded onto trucks to go to market.
When asked whether the USDA was evaluating or considering using these newer
tests in the U.S., Detwiler said they would look at them at some point in
the future. The reason the USDA isn't looking more closely at these tests
now is because "there's too much demand for them in Europe," and Prionics,
for example, is currently "unable to send any testing kits to the USDA,"she
says. "We can't start any evaluation if they can't deliver the European
tests to us."
Moser of Prionics and O'Connor of Enfer find it surprising Detwiler would
say this. "Our test has been commercially available since 1999," says
Moser, "how many do they want?" He says their test is marketed by Roche
Diagnostics in the U.S., which has for sometime been trying to get the USDA
to take interest in it. "It's been available to the USDA for a long time,
if they wanted it."
O'Connor of Ireland is also eager to get the Enfer test to the U.S.
government. "There is no problem getting Enfer tests to the U.S.," he says,
adding he would be delighted to have Enfer find a home in the U.S.. "We are
trying to get it in there with our marketing partner, Abbot Diagnostics."
Moser says that a "60 Minutes" producer recently contacted him for a story,
and also told him Detwiler at the USDA had made the same assertion, that
Prionics would be unable for several months to give the USDA a test to
evaluate. "How could the USA not be able to get our test?" asked Moser.
Asked what the USDA thought of the Nature study affirming the effectiveness
of the three rapid mad cow tests, Detwiler replied she wasn't familiar with
the study and needed to read it. She added that she expected it to take
quite some time for the USDA to evaluate the rapid tests, that it would
likely be a long time before they might be approved.
"Approval is really a gray area," says Moser. "Yes, things often go through
long processes to be formally approved, but the current method used by the
USDA hasn't been approved by anyone."
Approval is also a gray area because the test isn't being given to live
animals, which would normally require many safety tests, but is being
administered to dead brain tissue. The only needed testing appears to be to
determine whether or not the tests work - which the EU and a number of
individual European governments have already tested and proven perform
quite well.
Rapid testing was key to discovering BSE in Germany
BSE was first discovered in Switzerland in 1990, with the Swiss government
instituting numerous consumer protection measures to close off the country
from known BSE-sources. In 1998, conventional testing appeared to indicate
that BSE rates had declined dramatically. Prionics introduced their rapid
testing method and began marketing it.
"Some here in Switzerland were resistant, saying we had BSE under control,
why did we need to do this testing?" said Doherr. But others, including
consumer groups pushed for the new testing to be done, and so the Swiss
decided to try it.
"It became very apparent there were a lot of BSE cases that were missed
before we used the Prionics test," said Doherr. "We quickly realized that
this rapid testing was a very valuable tool to see how the epidemic is
progressing. There was a dramatic increase of BSE-infected animals
detected." Doherry says nearly four times as many cases of BSE were found
in Switzerland in 1999 when rapid testing was used, than were found in 1998
using only conventional testing (the same methods used today in the U.S.).
"This was huge news around the world," said Moser, whose company produces
the test. "Everyone was in shock over this discovery." Moser says Prionics
subsequently convinced Swiss authorities to do a test on 3000 normal cows,
in addition to testing fallen cows. The results revealed mad cow was also
in cows which had no obvious symptoms, and were headed into the food chain.
"Rapid testing was finding a lot of BSE in Switzerland," says Moser.
Switzerland's beef industry was coming under fire, he says, but the Swiss
argued that their beef was probably no worse than other EU countries, and
the only difference was they had better testing.
They turned out to be right.
Germany had long proclaimed it was BSE-free. They also used the same
testing the U.S. government currently uses. "The Germans didn't see any
BSE," says Moser, "So they said 'We're clean.'"
Moser said after Prionics found greatly increased mad cow in the Swiss
herd, his company tried to interest European governments in their test.
"They were in a state of denial, saying they didn't have BSE here, that
they had 'firewalls' around their countries, they had taken measures to
keep their beef safe, were already testing, and so on." Moser said most
governments weren't immediately interested in fast tests that would make it
possible and affordable to test many cows very quickly.
So Prionics began marketing their rapid test directly to labs in Germany,
and directly to meat producers. "And some of these companies felt they had
a responsibility toward their customers," says Moser. A few privately were
concerned that one day they might have legal liability if mad cow turned up
and infected people.
"If they did some testing now, that would be a reasonable step," Moser
says. Private labs then performed the Prionics test on a small number of
cattle -- and found BSE in German cows for the first time.
"It snowballed from there, Germany did more rapid testing and found it had
a big problem. It was a huge scandal," says Moser. All consumer groups in
Europe had been pushing for more testing, and now DG24, the Health and
Consumer Protection Directorate-General of the EU, issued rules for
mandatory minimum testing in member countries, for all fallen cattle and
cattle over 30 months of age.
"The importance of this new rapid test is that a lot of other countries
were claiming they had no BSE," says Doherr. "They were not implementing
any consumer measures to protect their public. It was important that these
countries were forced to use this test. It told them, 'You are wrong, you
do have BSE, and you need to do something to protect your consumers.'"
Commercial forces have since taken hold, Moser says, and countries wanting
to sell their beef to other EU countries have had to start widescale
testing to assure their foodchain, or other countries won't buy from them.
Worthless USDA "firewall" strategy?
Recent studies point to intensive factory farming techniques used widely in
Europe and the U.S. as causing mad cow to develop in herds. Specifically,
the practice of feeding cow protein back to cows is widely considered to
promote and spread mad cow disease. Although the U.S. enacted laws to stop
this practice in 1997, FDA monitoring in March of 2001 revealed that
several hundred U.S. feed factories are violating these rules intended to
prevent the spread of mad cow.
Additionally, the U.S. permits the feeding of other animal remains to cows,
which new research suggests may permit continued spread of mad cow disease.
This practice has been outlawed in Europe and elsewhere.
While keeping meat and feed from countries known to have BSE is important,
some experts say it's very possible if not likely that the disease can
appear spontaneously in a country with farming techniques used in the U.S.
and Europe, even in the absence of any outside "contamination." In this
instance, the current USDA "firewall strategy" - preventing mad cow from
appearing by blocking imports from BSE countries - would prove of little
use.
European experience also shows relying on the judgment of people in
slaughterhouses can be problematic, Moser says, as it requires a degree of
interpretation. "If a vet is not well educated in spotting signs of BSE,
they can easily miss them," he says.
Doherr agrees. "If a cow's production of milk drops significantly, in
Switzerland we test it as a sign of mad cow." In the U.S., however, that
cow is sent into the food chain. "BSE starts as a subtle chronic disease,
and gets more intensive. But it's easy to miss at early stages if you're
not trained," Doherr says. He says things as simple as a behavioral change,
a cow afraid of movement, noises or light, or a cow being sensitive to
touch - all signal BSE suspicion and trigger testing in Europe, but not in
the U.S.
"If a cow kicks when you try to milk it, a U.S. farmer - who is told 'we
don't have BSE here' - will not even think about it," says Doherr. "He'll
just think it's time to replace that cow. People who think they have no BSE
in their country are unlikely to recognize a case, let alone report it."
Moser also points to potential problems with the conventional immunohistory
testing, the testing method used by Germany (which many now realize missed
cases of BSE) and currently used by the U.S. While Moser believes the test
isn't a bad method per se, he says it has potential problems.
"These tests depend on the quality of the tissue," he says. "If the brain
tissue used in the test is not of good quality and is partly degraded, the
test becomes problematic.
This article, from 2001, slams the "Gold Standard" tests which the USDA has FOUR YEARS LATER found to be insufficient in finding positives.
______________________________________________________________
USA Mad Cow Testing--A Deliberate Coverup?
USA Government Falls Short on Testing for Mad Cow--Is This A Coverup?
Compared to the actions taken by countries in the European Union, the
United States government does not seem to be aggressive enough in
protecting American consumers from bovine spongiform encelphalopathy (BSE),
commonly known as mad cow disease.
The type of testing methods now used in the U.S. have been shown to miss
prions detected by the more advanced testing methods employed in Europe. (A
prion is a microscopic protein particle similar to a virus but lacking
nucleic acid, thought to be the infectious agent responsible for BSE and
certain other degenerative diseases of the nervous system.)
Germany, which long proclaimed itself "BSE-free" using the same type of
testing the US currently utilizes, did not discover its first mad cow cases
until it began using the more sensitive testing procedures.
The U.S. currently uses Western Blot analyses, immunohistory chemistry, and
histopathology, which are more labor intensive and take longer than the
newer tests. They require removing a portion of the brain, growing a
culture, staining it with dye, and examining how the dye has interacted
with the culture.
The U.S. also is presently testing only 1 out of every 18,000 cows
slaughtered, whereas countries like Switzerland test 1 out of every 60
cows...
Dr. Marcus Doherr is a veterinarian epidemiologist at the University of
Bern, Switzerland, who received his Ph.D. from University of California at
Davis. He helped design the Swiss mad cow testing program, regarded by many
experts as the most advanced in the world.
Doherr says that if the U.S. has as high an incidence of mad cow as France,
for example, the current USDA testing program would not detect it. "They're
not testing enough animals," he says. "The USDA argues it's a good sample,
but it isn't representative of the population it is trying to extrapolate."
European countries have for some time been testing a far greater percentage
of their cattle. And unlike the U.S., European countries are now testing
animals which are headed into their food chain. The U.S. is currently
testing a tiny number of "downer cows," cows which are selected for testing
visually by USDA inspectors because of obvious illness.
Dr. Linda Detwiler, a veterinarian who chairs the BSE Working Group at the
U.S. Department of Agricuture, defends current U.S. testing, asserting it
is adequate to detect mad cow if it is in the U.S. "We are targeting fallen
stock, and we know it's best to target those cows because in Switzerland,
the country with the greatest scientific experience with spotting the
disease, they found all their BSE cases in fallen stock, and none in
testing animals going into the Swiss food chain."
Actually, that's not entirely correct. Dr. Markus Moser, a molecular
biologist and guest researcher at Oxford University in England, heads the
Swiss company Prionics, which developed a rapid-response test for BSE,
called the Prionics Check Test. The Check Test costs about $40 per cow, and
Moser says it has found cases of mad cow in tests of "healthy" cattle which
otherwise would have entered the food chain.
Moser does agree with Detwiler that BSE has been found in significantly
higher percentages in fallen stock, making it reasonable to focus initial
testing there. However, you can't compare the current U.S. testing to
testing done in Europe, he says. The reason is because the U.S. has a very
different definition of "fallen stock" than the Europeans.
"In Europe," says Moser, "'fallen stock' refers to any cow not regularly
slaughtered, which gets sick or dies, breaks its leg and is destroyed, or
doesn't go into the food chain for any number of reasons. No such cows can
be disposed of in Europe without being tested for BSE."
But in the U.S., the term "fallen stock" appears to refer only to cattle
that actually arrive at the slaughterhouse and are so obviously sick that
they are pulled out of the line by a USDA inspector. "Who would bring a
sick animal to an abattoir that they knew was going to be pulled out?" says
Moser.
In fact, U.S. ranchers can dispose of sick cattle in a number of ways, such
as selling them to rendering plants to be turned into animal food. Unlike
Europe, the U.S. does not have the same laws insuring these fallen cattle
are not disposed of without testing first for BSE.
Dr. Mike O'Connor is another expert who believes U.S. policy could be
improved. O'Connor is a founder and the Technical Director of Enfer
Scientific, in Dublin, Ireland. His company developed the Enfer
rapid-response test for mad cow disease, now widely used in the UK and
Europe.
"It's illegal to bury casualty cattle in Ireland," says O'Connor. "You
can't just dispose of them however you want. They must be tested. That
obviously doesn't happen in the U.S."
Dr. Dagmar Heim, the head of Switzerland's BSE testing and surveillance
unit, points to the most dramatic illustration showing the difference
between European and U.S. definitions of "downer cows." It's the number of
cows the U.S. counts as "fallen" versus the number Europe identifies.
In Switzerland, she says, some 14,000 cows were identified and tested last
year as "high risk/fallen" out of a total of about 800,000 slaughtered. By
comparison, the US identified and tested only about 2,000 "fallen cattle"
-- out of a total 36 million slaughtered here.
That's a difference between 1.75% of all cows in Switzerland being
identified and tested as fallen cows, and .0056% (five-thousands of one
percent) of all U.S. cows being identified as "downers" and tested.
If the USDA used the same "fallen cattle" definition as Europe and ended up
testing 1.75% of its cattle for mad cow disease - as the Swiss do - the
U.S. would be testing about 630,000 cows per year, rather than the 2,303
cows tested last year.
Moser says the USDA's claim that it is testing what the Swiss have
identified as a "high risk group" - fallen cattle - is not accurate.
"You're testing a very small sub-population of what Europe looks at, a tiny
fraction of what we consider to be 'fallen cattle.' It's not the same at
all."
Best mad cow disease test is "made in the USA" - but not used here
According to a study published in 1999 in the scientific journal Nature,
the most sensitive mad cow test produced to date is made by a company
called Bio-Rad, with headquarters in Hercules, California, near San
Francisco. In 1998, the European Union formed a commission to evaluate mad
cow tests, and the result was a joint effort between the French Atomic
Energy Comission and Bio-Rad, which developed and in 2000 began marketing a
test called Platelia BSE. Bio-Rad CFO, Tom Chesterman, says their rapid
response mad cow test costs $17 per cow, with some 600,000 tests having
been sold in Europe since the beginning of the year.
Two other tests reviewed in the Nature study were also shown to be highly
effective; Dr. Moser's Prionics Check Test, and Dr. O'Connor's Enfer. All
three tests are designed to provide quick response times, enabling meat
packers to test animals and get results back before slaughtered carcasses
in the plant's "chill room" reach 4 degrees Centigrade, the temperature at
which they can be loaded onto trucks to go to market.
When asked whether the USDA was evaluating or considering using these newer
tests in the U.S., Detwiler said they would look at them at some point in
the future. The reason the USDA isn't looking more closely at these tests
now is because "there's too much demand for them in Europe," and Prionics,
for example, is currently "unable to send any testing kits to the USDA,"she
says. "We can't start any evaluation if they can't deliver the European
tests to us."
Moser of Prionics and O'Connor of Enfer find it surprising Detwiler would
say this. "Our test has been commercially available since 1999," says
Moser, "how many do they want?" He says their test is marketed by Roche
Diagnostics in the U.S., which has for sometime been trying to get the USDA
to take interest in it. "It's been available to the USDA for a long time,
if they wanted it."
O'Connor of Ireland is also eager to get the Enfer test to the U.S.
government. "There is no problem getting Enfer tests to the U.S.," he says,
adding he would be delighted to have Enfer find a home in the U.S.. "We are
trying to get it in there with our marketing partner, Abbot Diagnostics."
Moser says that a "60 Minutes" producer recently contacted him for a story,
and also told him Detwiler at the USDA had made the same assertion, that
Prionics would be unable for several months to give the USDA a test to
evaluate. "How could the USA not be able to get our test?" asked Moser.
Asked what the USDA thought of the Nature study affirming the effectiveness
of the three rapid mad cow tests, Detwiler replied she wasn't familiar with
the study and needed to read it. She added that she expected it to take
quite some time for the USDA to evaluate the rapid tests, that it would
likely be a long time before they might be approved.
"Approval is really a gray area," says Moser. "Yes, things often go through
long processes to be formally approved, but the current method used by the
USDA hasn't been approved by anyone."
Approval is also a gray area because the test isn't being given to live
animals, which would normally require many safety tests, but is being
administered to dead brain tissue. The only needed testing appears to be to
determine whether or not the tests work - which the EU and a number of
individual European governments have already tested and proven perform
quite well.
Rapid testing was key to discovering BSE in Germany
BSE was first discovered in Switzerland in 1990, with the Swiss government
instituting numerous consumer protection measures to close off the country
from known BSE-sources. In 1998, conventional testing appeared to indicate
that BSE rates had declined dramatically. Prionics introduced their rapid
testing method and began marketing it.
"Some here in Switzerland were resistant, saying we had BSE under control,
why did we need to do this testing?" said Doherr. But others, including
consumer groups pushed for the new testing to be done, and so the Swiss
decided to try it.
"It became very apparent there were a lot of BSE cases that were missed
before we used the Prionics test," said Doherr. "We quickly realized that
this rapid testing was a very valuable tool to see how the epidemic is
progressing. There was a dramatic increase of BSE-infected animals
detected." Doherry says nearly four times as many cases of BSE were found
in Switzerland in 1999 when rapid testing was used, than were found in 1998
using only conventional testing (the same methods used today in the U.S.).
"This was huge news around the world," said Moser, whose company produces
the test. "Everyone was in shock over this discovery." Moser says Prionics
subsequently convinced Swiss authorities to do a test on 3000 normal cows,
in addition to testing fallen cows. The results revealed mad cow was also
in cows which had no obvious symptoms, and were headed into the food chain.
"Rapid testing was finding a lot of BSE in Switzerland," says Moser.
Switzerland's beef industry was coming under fire, he says, but the Swiss
argued that their beef was probably no worse than other EU countries, and
the only difference was they had better testing.
They turned out to be right.
Germany had long proclaimed it was BSE-free. They also used the same
testing the U.S. government currently uses. "The Germans didn't see any
BSE," says Moser, "So they said 'We're clean.'"
Moser said after Prionics found greatly increased mad cow in the Swiss
herd, his company tried to interest European governments in their test.
"They were in a state of denial, saying they didn't have BSE here, that
they had 'firewalls' around their countries, they had taken measures to
keep their beef safe, were already testing, and so on." Moser said most
governments weren't immediately interested in fast tests that would make it
possible and affordable to test many cows very quickly.
So Prionics began marketing their rapid test directly to labs in Germany,
and directly to meat producers. "And some of these companies felt they had
a responsibility toward their customers," says Moser. A few privately were
concerned that one day they might have legal liability if mad cow turned up
and infected people.
"If they did some testing now, that would be a reasonable step," Moser
says. Private labs then performed the Prionics test on a small number of
cattle -- and found BSE in German cows for the first time.
"It snowballed from there, Germany did more rapid testing and found it had
a big problem. It was a huge scandal," says Moser. All consumer groups in
Europe had been pushing for more testing, and now DG24, the Health and
Consumer Protection Directorate-General of the EU, issued rules for
mandatory minimum testing in member countries, for all fallen cattle and
cattle over 30 months of age.
"The importance of this new rapid test is that a lot of other countries
were claiming they had no BSE," says Doherr. "They were not implementing
any consumer measures to protect their public. It was important that these
countries were forced to use this test. It told them, 'You are wrong, you
do have BSE, and you need to do something to protect your consumers.'"
Commercial forces have since taken hold, Moser says, and countries wanting
to sell their beef to other EU countries have had to start widescale
testing to assure their foodchain, or other countries won't buy from them.
Worthless USDA "firewall" strategy?
Recent studies point to intensive factory farming techniques used widely in
Europe and the U.S. as causing mad cow to develop in herds. Specifically,
the practice of feeding cow protein back to cows is widely considered to
promote and spread mad cow disease. Although the U.S. enacted laws to stop
this practice in 1997, FDA monitoring in March of 2001 revealed that
several hundred U.S. feed factories are violating these rules intended to
prevent the spread of mad cow.
Additionally, the U.S. permits the feeding of other animal remains to cows,
which new research suggests may permit continued spread of mad cow disease.
This practice has been outlawed in Europe and elsewhere.
While keeping meat and feed from countries known to have BSE is important,
some experts say it's very possible if not likely that the disease can
appear spontaneously in a country with farming techniques used in the U.S.
and Europe, even in the absence of any outside "contamination." In this
instance, the current USDA "firewall strategy" - preventing mad cow from
appearing by blocking imports from BSE countries - would prove of little
use.
European experience also shows relying on the judgment of people in
slaughterhouses can be problematic, Moser says, as it requires a degree of
interpretation. "If a vet is not well educated in spotting signs of BSE,
they can easily miss them," he says.
Doherr agrees. "If a cow's production of milk drops significantly, in
Switzerland we test it as a sign of mad cow." In the U.S., however, that
cow is sent into the food chain. "BSE starts as a subtle chronic disease,
and gets more intensive. But it's easy to miss at early stages if you're
not trained," Doherr says. He says things as simple as a behavioral change,
a cow afraid of movement, noises or light, or a cow being sensitive to
touch - all signal BSE suspicion and trigger testing in Europe, but not in
the U.S.
"If a cow kicks when you try to milk it, a U.S. farmer - who is told 'we
don't have BSE here' - will not even think about it," says Doherr. "He'll
just think it's time to replace that cow. People who think they have no BSE
in their country are unlikely to recognize a case, let alone report it."
Moser also points to potential problems with the conventional immunohistory
testing, the testing method used by Germany (which many now realize missed
cases of BSE) and currently used by the U.S. While Moser believes the test
isn't a bad method per se, he says it has potential problems.
"These tests depend on the quality of the tissue," he says. "If the brain
tissue used in the test is not of good quality and is partly degraded, the
test becomes problematic.