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Wall Street Warns of Upcoming
Mad Cow Crisis in the USA

November 28, 2001

The U.S. May Face Mad-Cow Exposure Despite Assurances From Government
By STEVE STECKLOW (2,410 words)

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB1006897773680759520.htm

Like a mantra, federal officials and beef-industry executives are fond
of repeating that there never has been a case of mad-cow disease in
the United States.

It's the same claim that Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan used to
make -- until the disease showed up in their cattle, instantly
resulting in plunging beef sales.

Will the U.S. go down the same road?

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Harvard University
plan to release a government-funded study that is expected to show
that the U.S. has little chance of facing the kind of mad-cow epidemic
that befell Britain, where the disease was first diagnosed in cattle
15 years ago.

But a close examination of America's mad-cow safety net shows
some possible flaws. New data provided Tuesday by the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration reveal that scores of shipments of animal
byproducts for use in animal feed came into the U.S. in recent years
from countries that now have mad-cow disease in their cattle herds,
a potentially serious source of contamination. In addition, federal
inspections have shown that many U.S. animal-feed mills continue to
violate regulations designed to prevent the spread of the disease. And
critics say the U.S. isn't spending enough time or money inspecting
cattle -- or people -- for signs of the sickness.

Costly Implications

The potential implications for America's already-battered economy are
significant: A little-noticed analysis by the FDA in 1997 predicted
that if mad-cow disease ever struck cattle in the U.S., the costs
would run into the billions of dollars, mostly "to restore consumer
confidence in beef and dairy products."

Mad-cow disease is worrisome because it can jump from cows to humans,
and the incurable ailment, which perforates the brain with microscopic
holes, is always fatal. During the past five years, more than 100
people, nearly all in Britain, have died from variant
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and at least 27 new cases have been
diagnosed in the first 10 months of this year. Meanwhile, bovine
spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), which strikes cows, has been reported
in domestic herds in 18 countries to date. Several other countries
have found diseased animals that had been imported from Britain.

Though the origins of BSE remain unclear, scientists are convinced
that it spreads among cattle through infected feed containing meat-and-
bone meal, a protein supplement made from the ground-up parts of cows.
If the animal being processed is infected, then the meal can transmit the
disease to many other animals. It takes only one gram of contaminated
material to infect a cow.

Britain banned the practice of feeding meat-and-bone meal to cattle in
1988. It later expanded the ban to other farm animals after finding
that the material was still contaminating some cattle feed because of
sloppy handling by farmers and feed mills. To date, more than 180,000
British cows have contracted the disease, although the number of cases
has been steadily declining since 1993.

Missing: 32 Cattle

U.S. officials say the British experience isn't comparable. All but 32
live cattle imported from Britain and Ireland in the 1980s into the
U.S. have been traced and destroyed or quarantined. Government
officials and many experts also say that, even if a few cases of BSE
were to show up in the U.S., there's little chance the disease would
spread to many cattle. Harvard University researcher George Gray, who
entered numerous possible scenarios into a computer model as part of
the new study with the USDA, says, "Almost no matter what we do, it
doesn't blow up in the U.S."

But even Dr. Gray doesn't rule out the possibility of some cases
cropping up. For one thing, the U.S. didn't ban most mammal-based
animal protein, including meat-and-bone meal, in cattle rations until
1997. And, unlike in Europe, it continues to allow it in feed for
other farm animals, including pigs and chickens, leaving a risk of
cross-contamination into cattle feed.

Another concern in the U.S. is imports. Last December, the USDA
banned all imports of rendered animal proteins from 31 countries that
either had BSE or presented "an undue risk of introducing BSE into
the United States."

In response to a request from this newspaper, the FDA recently tracked
how much animal protein came into the U.S. from those 31 countries
between 1998 and last December. The records, gleaned from U.S. Customs
data, showed at least 72 shipments, including mammal-based bone meal,
dried meat scraps, animal waste and blood. The countries included
Britain as well as places such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain and
Japan, where mad-cow cases are on the rise. The weight of the
shipments wasn't available.

In addition, the FDA said that 30 shipments of animal byproducts had
arrived in the U.S. after the ban took effect. The agency has been
able to track 11 of those shipments, but the whereabouts of the other
19 isn't clear. The agency said it is investigating.

FDA officials said in interviews that they believe most of the animal
protein imported from the 31 countries ended up in pet food. But the
records provided by the agency don't indicate the material's intended
use.

It's also unclear how much animal protein, including possibly
meat-and-bone meal, has been imported into the U.S. in recent years
from non-European countries which haven't yet detected mad-cow disease
but could in the future. Other than Japan, "if an Asian country wants
to export meat-and-bone meal into the U.S. there would not be any
restrictions," says Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the FDA's Center
for Veterinary Medicine. He notes, however, that once inside the U.S.,
the material would be subject to the cattle-feed ban.

'Chicken Litter' Risk

Another potential problem, say FDA officials, is "chicken litter," the
mixture of excrement, excess feed and feathers that ends up on the
floor of chicken houses. Although the beef and feed industry doesn't
like to publicize it, the material remains permissible as an
ingredient in cattle feed, although the practice of using it isn't
believed to be widespread. "It's mostly an on-the-farm practice," says
Richard Sellers, vice president for feed control and nutrition at the
American Feed Industry Association. Since chicken feed can contain
bovine meat-and-bone meal, the litter represents a potential source of
contamination, the FDA believes. "In litter, there is feed that's
spilled and gets mixed in," says the FDA's Dr. Sundlof. He says the
agency is considering banning its use in cattle feed.

The FDA also is considering banning the use of so-called "plate waste"
in cattle feed, Dr. Sundlof says. The 1997 mammalian-protein ban
exempted left-over restaurant food, which can be processed and fed to
cows, although it's mostly fed to pigs. Hotel-casinos and theme parks
in places such as Atlantic City, N.J., and Orlando have been the main
providers. But the FDA believes such waste could contain bits of cow
brain or other potentially infected cow parts that, unlike in Europe,
are still allowed to be consumed in the U.S.

However, plate-waste proponents argue that banning the stuff in cattle
feed is illogical. Asks Michael Malecha, a food-industry consultant in
Madison, Wis., "Here we have a product that's USDA-inspected, that's
suitable to be served to humans, and yet we're saying, don't feed it
to animals?"

Recent evidence also raises questions about the effectiveness -- and
enforcement -- of the 1997 cattle-feed ban itself.

When the FDA published the regulation detailing the ban, it stated
that "the vigorous implementation of this rule will very nearly
eliminate the risk of the widespread proliferation of BSE in the
United States." But FDA officials concede today they don't even know
how many feed mills operate in the U.S. Many are small and don't
require federal licenses. In addition, when the ban was implemented,
no money was authorized to verify feed mills were complying. As a
result, agency officials say, planned inspections soon fell behind
schedule.

Disappointing Inspections

Officials say they've since caught up, but the results so far are
disappointing: Inspections of 2,653 feed mills that handle
meat-and-bone meal found that more than a fifth weren't taking
adequate precautions to ensure the material wasn't ending up in cattle
feed. And even after many reinspections, as of late last month about
13% of the mills remained out of compliance.

A review of more than 50 warning letters the FDA sent to feed mills
this year shows the type of problems encountered. During a March visit
to Farmers Mill & Elevator Co. in Dexter, Ga., which makes cattle and
hog feed, an inspector found meat-and-bone meal that was being stored
on pallets of cattle feed. He also discovered that corn used to flush
out mixing equipment prior to making cattle feed was being bagged for
use in hog feed, but without any required warning labels not to use it
in cattle feed.

"Of particular concern is that these same violations were pointed out
during the previous inspection of this facility on Oct. 21, 1998,"
states the warning letter, dated March 30, 2001.

Carol Rowland, the mill's office manager, says the company has since
stopped using meat-and-bone meal altogether. "I'd rather not handle
it," she says.

Most of the violations found during feed-mill inspections center on
paperwork. For example, mills were cited for failing to establish
written procedures to prevent meat-and-bone meal from mingling with
cattle feed, or to label products that contain meal with the warning,
"Do not feed to Cattle or Other Ruminants." But the FDA hasn't
actually tested any cattle feed to see if it contains any prohibited
material.

In contrast, Britain has been conducting such tests since 1996. FDA
officials say they intend to test 600 samples of cattle feed next
year. "That was what we could afford to do," an agency official
explained. Officials say they will increase testing if they find
evidence of contamination.

While the FDA is responsible for regulating animal feed, the
Agriculture Department is charged with dealing with animal diseases,
including BSE. The USDA says it has conducted an "active surveillance
program since 1990" to prevent the disease from entering the U.S. and
hasn't detected any signs.

Unlike in Europe, the USDA's surveillance program doesn't test
apparently healthy animals. The agency says 88% of U.S. cattle are
slaughtered at less than 20 months of age, and no BSE has ever been
detected in an animal that young. "We want to target where we're most
likely to find it, as opposed to shotgunning," says Linda Detwiler,
who oversees the USDA's mad-cow surveillance efforts.

The USDA says it's focusing on cows that can't walk, known as downer
cows. While a variety of ailments, ranging from muscle tears to
neurological disorders, can prevent a cow from standing, it's also a
documented symptom of mad-cow disease. The agency estimates there are
about 130,000 downer animals in the U.S. each year. This year it has
tested more than 4,400, up from 344 in 1998.

But a quirky consequence of the mad-cow scare is that cattle raisers
now have a financial incentive to kill and bury downers rather than
send them to slaughterhouses, where USDA inspectors are deployed to
test for BSE and other health hazards. The market for downers has been
drying up. Fast-food chains such as McDonald's Corp. and Burger King
Corp. have told slaughterhouses they no longer will accept meat from
such animals as a safety precaution. (Mad-cow disease isn't the only
concern. Downers tend to carry salmonella and other pathogens from
lying in manure.)

Worried that downer cows may be falling off its radar screen, the USDA
has begun offering to purchase them for BSE-testing purposes.

The flip side of mad-cow surveillance in the U.S. is the effort to
detect the disease in humans. Unlike the repeated claims that the
country is at little risk of BSE, government officials say cases of
variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human version of the illness,
appear almost inevitable. That's because millions of Americans lived
or travelled to Britain during the 1980s and early 1990s, when BSE was
rampant, and may have been exposed by consuming infected meat. Hong
Kong, for example, recently reported a vCJD case of a woman who had
spent years living in Britain.

"I would not be surprised if there is a vCJD case in the U.S.," says
the FDA's Dr. Sundlof. Adds Lawrence Schonberger, an epidemiologist
at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, "There may
well be some people in the United States who are incubating the
disease." (The disease's incubation period remains unknown, but it is
believed to take years, even decades, before symptoms emerge.)

But one of the scientists involved in looking for human cases says the
surveillance effort to date is inadequate and that the U.S. "is way
behind" other countries, including Canada. "There's no question in my
mind that this country must have good surveillance because if we miss
these cases, then we are in trouble," warns Pierluigi Gambetti,
director of the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center
at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Mad-cow is one of
several related brain disorders believed to be caused by an aberrant
protein known as a prion.

Dr. Gambetti says he's concerned because vCJD potentially is much more
infectious than classical CJD, a prion disease already present in the
U.S. Classical CJD occurs spontaneously in about one in every million
people and can be transmitted through surgical instruments used in
brain operations. Although there's no known case of a human passing
vCJD to another human, scientists are worried it may be transmissible
through blood or other means. That fear has prompted restrictions in
the U.S. on blood donors who have spent time in Britain and the rest
of Europe.

Dr. Gambetti says there are about 300 reported cases of prion diseases
in the U.S. each year, but that his lab currently is analyzing only
about a third of them to see if they might be mad-cow disease. "The
British and Germans politely smile when they see we examine 30% or 40%
of the cases," he says. "They know unless you examine 80% or more, you
are not in touch."

At the CDC, which helps to fund Dr. Gambetti's lab, Dr. Schonberger
agrees that "the more autopsies that are done, the better it will be
for detecting" vCJD. But he believes the surveillance in the U.S. up
until now has been adequate because, even though relatively few
autopsies have been done, the CDC has reviewed the medical records of
all victims of prion disease under the age of 55 and has found no
cases of mad-cow.

Write to Steve Stecklow at steve.stecklow@wsj.com

Hyperlinks in this Article:
http://interactive.wsj.com/pages/madcow.htm