January 2, 2004 The Asheville Citizen-Times editorial

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman insists the food supply is safe, but in fact no one knows for sure.

The cow was slaughtered Dec. 9 but test results were not available until Dec. 23 and the meat had been shipped in the meantime. The Agriculture Department still has not tracked down all of it.

This would not have happened in many Western Europe nations, or in Japan. There, regulators use a test that provides results within three hours, quickly enough to prevent the meat from being shipped.

Veneman stressed that there is virtually no danger in eating meat from an infected cow. That's true as far as it goes; the real danger comes from eating brain or spinal-cord tissue. But, new butchering techniques cut ever closer to the bone, increasing the chance that such tissue will wind up in hamburger.

Also, the spinal cord of the infected cow had been sent to a plant that makes feed for pets, pigs and poultry. Such feed cannot be used for cattle, because this is the way mad cow disease spreads, but the pigs and poultry can be used in cattle feed.

It's not as if this were an unknown risk. Mad cow disease, named for the erratic behavior it produces in the animals, was first detected in Great Britain in 1986. A decade later, it was linked to a human brain disorder known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Since then, Britain and many other nations have instituted strict standards, but little was done in the U.S. under either the Clinton or the Bush administration.

Equally disturbing are reports that U.S. inspectors have been harassed for doing what little they could. Dr. Lester Friedlander, who is suing the Agriculture Department, says he was transferred after owners of a Pennsylvania hamburger plant complained. Another inspector, who would not give his name because he still is on the job, reported lax treatment of downers at a Midwestern plant.

Western European nations last year tested 10 million cows, including all that were more than two years old or ill. Japan tested all of the 1.2 million cows slaughtered there. By comparison, the U.S. tested fewer than 30,000 of the 300 million cows slaughtered here in the last nine years.

The new rules announced Monday include a ban on using cows that cannot walk, called "downers," in human food. (The Washington State cow was a downer.) In addition, central nervous system tissue of cows older than 30 months, and lower intestines from any cow, cannot be used for human food. Packing-plant standards are being tightened to prevent contamination of meat with spinal-cord tissue. Meat of cows being tested cannot be shipped until results are available. A tracking system is being set up.

These moves are important both to the cattle industry and the consumer. They also are nearly a decade overdue.