May 29, 2003 by The Independent (London) by Andrew Gumbel

The discovery of a single BSE-infected carcass in Canada hasn't triggered panic or a diminution in beef consumption south of the border - yet. Government officials and meat industry spokesmen insist the temporary ban on Canadian imports is enough to protect domestic consumers.

But critics who have been predicting for years that it is just a matter of time before cattle in the United States become infected have gone into overdrive, demanding a complete rethink of the way cows in the United States are fed, inspected and traced from their point of origin to their destination on the dinner plates of an unabashedly carnivorous nation. The discovery of mad cow disease in Canada is a very significant development. It means no beef-producing nation can believe that it is and can remain BSE-free, said Steve Bjerklie, editor of the trade magazine Meat Processing.

Others have gone even further. Bruno Oesch of Zurich University told the BBC yesterday that US consumers could well have been eating contaminated beef for some time because of the close relationship between the Canadian and US meat industries. That remains to be proven - several other experts said they wanted to see more data before assuming any spread of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy beyond the one cow diagnosed so far - but the danger clearly exists.

More than 70 per cent of Canadian beef and veal exports went south of the border last year, according to the Canadian Beef Export Federation, accounting for a $ 1.67bn bite out of an $ 80bn industry in the United States.

Particularly worrying is the fact the dead cow in Alberta was initially misdiagnosed with bovine pneumonia, leading to a four-month delay between the animal's death and the announcement that it had BSE. If there was a more widespread contamination - the Canadians are now busy testing several herds - the potential for BSE's entry into the food chain is considerable.

At the same time, US government regulators have been upbraided for years for their unwillingness to institute blanket testing of all dead cattle, and for numerous loopholes in the rules supposedly intended to keep cattle products from being fed back to live herds. There is some evidence that at least three mink that contracted a spongiform degenerative disease in the United States may have been become infected by eating BSE-infected cattle meat. A chronic wasting disease in the same family of pathogens as BSE has turned up in deer in Wisconsin and Colorado, and although it is not known whether this is linked to any incidence of mad cow disease, some experts have their suspicions.

The US beef industry began taking steps to counter this chorus of criticism yesterday. "Let's take a deep breath and look at everything in a rational way," Chandler Keys of the US Beef Association told USA Today, the first US newspaper to pick up on the story. He argued that one case of BSE in Canada was not grounds for panic, and that US testing standards were just fine given that the country was officially BSE-free.

Last year, the US Department of Agriculture conducted tests on the brains of 19,990 dead cattle - out of an estimated 100 million animals across the country - and issued a completely clean bill of health. Ever since the BSE scare in Britain hit the international headlines in 1996, the official attitude on this side of the Atlantic has been one of zero tolerance towards imports from suspect foreign countries, coupled with a relatively relaxed attitude to the domestic industry.

For the moment, Mr Keys has got public opinion on his side. Monday was the Memorial Day holiday in the United States, traditionally the opening day of summer and an invitation to American families everywhere to pull out the barbecue and roast some steaks and burgers. And all indications are that this year's holiday had as much sizzle as ever.

But some critics suggest the US attitude is dangerously isolationist. "I think we have the sense that Canada is this far-off country somewhere. I don't think people realise how integrated our cattle system is," Dr Michael Greger, a physician with the Organic Consumers of America, told Reuters. "We have the same kind of inadequate surveillance in both countries, inadequate feed ban loopholes. We've really got to act as if this happened in Texas."

In response to the British BSE crisis, the US Food and Drug Administration issued a ban in 1997 that stopped the widespread practice of feeding the rendered remains of dead sheep and cattle to cow herds. The ban also extended to dead cats and dogs from animal shelters. The FDA, however, has come under heavy criticism for what the ban left out.

Dead horses, pigs and poultry continue to be included in cattle feed, as do blood products from all animals including cows. It is OK for a farmer to feed dead cattle to poultry, and it is OK for the same farmer to feed dead poultry to cattle, so there is considerable risk of cross-contamination.

The continued use of blood products seems particularly illogical, since the FDA has strict rules in place - inspired by the BSE scare - preventing would-be donors from giving blood if they have spent time in Britain.

Industry critics, as well as producers of organic meat, believe it is in everybody's interests to stop feeding cows animal products of all kinds - something that is done largely for financial reasons, not because it is good for either the cows or the humans who end up eating them. "I have not heard a good case yet for feeding ruminants the ground up remains of other animals," Mr Bjerklie said. "Yeah, it's protein-rich feed but there are a lot of other protein-rich feeds." There are also calls for a rigorous traceback system, already in operation among organic producers, some of whom use global positioning systems to track their cattle.

The chances of implementing such reforms without a big political imperative such as a health scare seem rather slim, however. True to their image as the descendants of ruggedly individualistic Wild West cowboys, US livestock owners are notoriously resistant to government oversight of any kind. Successive US governments, always more receptive to industry lobbying than they are to public interest groups, have generally stayed off their backs.

That helps explain why no action was taken after a government report revealed two years ago that animal feed was being improperly labelled, and that inadequate steps were being taken to prevent cross-contamination. If the BSE scare grows, that might be an issue worth revisiting.