January 20, 2004 The Asheville Citizen-Times by TERRI DAVID

Meat from the infected cow entered the human food supply. The brain, intestines and spinal cord were removed prior to processing, but contrary to what the USDA is saying, eating the muscle is still a risk. Stanley Prusiner, the scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of prions through which BSE is transmitted, described the levels of prions in muscles as "quite high." The New England Journal of Medicine published research concurring with Prusiner's findings. In Europe, scientists have recognized that transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) jump the species barrier. This is the family of diseases to which mad cow disease belongs. Europe has banned the feeding of animals to animals, but in the U.S., the practice is legal and universal. Cattle tissue thought to be suspect is fed to chickens and pigs, and their remains are often rendered into cattle feed, possibly cycling BSE back to cows. Dr. Paul Brown, medical director for the U.S. Public Health Service, says that pigs and chickens could pass TSEs directly to humans. Blood cells also carry prions, yet it is still standard practice in the U.S. to feed cow's blood to calves to wean them from their mother's milk.

In 1997, the industry made a minor concession. The feeding of ruminants to ruminants was banned. However, in 2002, the U.S. General Accounting Office released a report stating that the FDA had failed to enforce the feed ban, and may have already "placed U.S. herds and, in turn, the human food supply at risk." Hundreds of feed suppliers were found to be in violation of the ban. Veterinarians and other scientists who monitor the cattle industry have been saying that mad cow disease has been in the U.S. for years. It is not surprising that it has taken so long for the first case to turn up. The U.S. tested less than 2 percent of downed cows (animals too sick or lame to walk) over the last decade, and only increased testing to about 10 percent in 2003. One study showed that downer cows were up to 250 times more likely to test positive for mad cow disease. In Europe and Japan, where testing is much more pervasive, the disease was even found in animals that appeared to be perfectly healthy. Due to scant testing, no one knows how many infected cows may have already entered the U.S. food supply.

If mad cow disease is here in the U.S., why haven't we seen the human form called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD)? It seems that the government's attitude is that if you don't look for it, you won't find it. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has not required that CJD be a notifiable disease. Thus, when a case is discovered, no one is required to report it to the CDC. Also, many doctors are reluctant to do autopsies on suspected CJD patients because of its highly infectious nature. Two studies done on Alzheimer's patients showed that 5.5 percent and 13 percent, respectively, of patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's had actually been suffering from CJD. The National Foundation for Infectious Diseases states that one out of every million people gets CJD, thereby giving the U.S. about 270 cases. If just 1 percent of the 4 million Alzheimer's patients have been misdiagnosed, that would mean we have 40,000 cases of CJD, not just 270. It would not be unreasonable to think that this possible epidemic would include variant CJD. To complicate matters, some scientists now believe that infected beef may be causing classical CJD, and humans may be able to carry the disease, but not show symptoms. Researchers have stated: "Subclinical human carriers might pose a serious risk for contamination of surgical instruments, tissue transplants and blood products."

The cattle industry is very powerful, and they have been able to resist tougher regulations until now. Don't be fooled by the disingenuous rhetoric that the beef supply is safe. The industry has only agreed to stricter regulations because they have lost the export market, and they fear a panic in the domestic market. The new rules still leave gaping holes that endanger the public. The USDA's prime purpose is to market agricultural products, and their allegiance is to industry. The fact that Ann Veneman appointed Dale Moore, former chief lobbyist for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, to be her chief of staff indicates exactly where the USDA's loyalties lie.