January 3, 2004 Knight-Ridder by Seth Sorenstein

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture banned ill and injured cattle from being used in human food supplies, prohibited human consumption of older cows' brains and spinal cords and created regulations on the tracking, testing and slaughtering of cattle. The actions were lauded by nearly every food-safety expert.

"We were dancing around the office when we heard the news," said Karen Taylor Mitchell, executive director of Safe Tables Our Priority, or STOP. The Burlington, Vt.-based national food safety group was formed by relatives of people who died from food-related illnesses. "We applaud the USDA for this great first step."

However, she said, "It's a shame it takes such a huge crisis to drive progress."

Two safety concerns remain: Should more be done to combat mad cow disease in the United States? And what should be done about other, more lethal problems with the beef supply?

Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman's ban on human consumption of ill and injured cattle fulfilled the major recommendation from some Democratic lawmakers and consumer and animal-rights groups. Those animals are at the highest risk of being infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.

But only 195,000 sick or injured cattle each year out of the 35-million-plus animals are slaughtered. And so far, only one cow was found sickened by mad cow disease.

In Britain, where mad cow infection decimated the nation's herd in the last several years and likely killed 145 people, the government doesn't allow cattle older than 30 months to be slaughtered. In Japan, all cattle are tested for disease before they can enter the food supply.

Susan Solarz, a former USDA biologist now at American University, said of Britain's age ban: "If your goal is to make the U.S. beef supply 100-percent safe for human consumption, then yes, it is a necessary step."

But Dan Murphy, spokesman for the American Meat Institute, said such a ban is unnecessary, has no basis in science and would be a "total economic disaster for the industry." USDA tests of tens of thousands of cattle have found only one case of mad cow, and that cow came from Canada, Murphy said.

University of Maryland veterinarian Linda Detwiler, who until this summer was the USDA's top scientist on mad cow disease, agreed that limiting slaughter to young cattle isn't necessary. Britain has been the country hit hardest with mad cow disease and thus needs more stringent safeguards, she said. The United States "is not even close" to needing what Britain needs, she said.

Consumer and food-safety groups -- including STOP, the Government Accountability Project and the Consumer Federation of America -- called for even tougher meat and cattle tracking systems than the ones outlined by Veneman on Tuesday.

"You could easily have meat from 40 different cows in that" ground beef "package by the time it gets to consumers, so figuring out which farm and processing plants it came through is almost impossible to do," Mitchell said.

But food safety is a bigger issue than mad cow disease, experts say.

The U.S. meat inspection system is based on a 1906 law in which federal inspectors look for obvious flaws in beef rather than rely on scientific tests for bacteria and other pathogens, said Michael Taylor, a former administrator of the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service.

"The visual approach to inspection is not really sufficient to address the food safety problem," Taylor said. "You can't see bacteria."

But bacteria kill. An estimated 5,000 people die each year from food-borne illnesses such as salmonella, listeria and E. coli, Mitchell said.

More and better microbiological testing is needed to protect consumers against such organisms, said Dr. Christopher Braden of the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"I think that there is a way we can improve safety and still be able to conduct profitable business," Braden said.