http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/bw/20040105/bs_bw/b3865034One week after confirming the nation's first case of mad cow disease, the U.S. Agriculture Dept. took a first step toward dealing with the crisis. On Dec. 30, Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman announced that "downer" cows, which are animals too sick to walk, will no longer end up on our dinner plates. Falling down is a key symptom of mad cow disease -- otherwise known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE (news - web sites)) -- yet meat from hundreds of thousands of lame cows was being packed up and sent to supermarkets every year. The ban on that practice is the linchpin in the USDA's response to the incident, which also includes a provision outlawing the use of heads, spinal tissue, and other potentially infectious body parts from older cows in human food.
On the surface, it may look like the USDA is finally waking up. But these new measures are not enough. For years, and even today, the department has insisted that the nation's beef supply is not at risk. Its downplaying of the disease is reminiscent of the British government's initial reaction to an outbreak in England of mad cow disease in 1989. Then-Agriculture Minister John Gummer even fed his 4-year-old daughter a hamburger on television to prove how safe the meat was. We know what happened in Britain: More than 130 people died, and millions of cattle had to be destroyed. Eventually, though, the Brits got their act together and now have a rigorous testing program in place. Here in the U.S., though, the USDA caved to strong lobbying by cattlemen who opposed stricter, more expensive controls.
Other countries do much more to protect their citizens. In Japan, all cattle slaughtered for food, and, in Europe, all such cattle age 30 months and older, are tested for BSE -- costing just a few cents per pound. That compares with just 20,000 cattle tested in the U.S., or less than 0.001% of the 36 million animals slaughtered here each year.
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Despite the USDA's reassurances, many food-safety experts fear that the ban on feeding bovine by-products to other cows won't actually protect America from mad cow disease. That's because it has some gaping loopholes. First, the ban doesn't outlaw the feeding of cow's blood to other cows. Beef farmers often feed dried cattle blood to calves as a supplement to promote faster weight gain. Some experts worry that could spread BSE.
If that's not enough to turn you into a vegetarian, consider a second loophole: The regulations don't ban feeding cattle by-products to poultry and poultry droppings to cattle. Poultry is not susceptible to mad cow disease, but it's possible that the illness could be passed through them to cattle because commercial cow feed often contains a mix of poultry droppings and grain. "We know this is a disease that's transmitted through feeding, yet we still feed billions of pounds of cow by-products back to livestock," says John Stauber, co-author of the 1997 book Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here? "The reality is, this ban is fatally flawed."
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