May 23, 2003 9:00am KQED Forum hosted by Angie Coiro (Listen to this entire program.)Host: Angie Coiro
Guests:
Wendell Sanford, political consul of Canada for California
Larry Hawkins, regional public affairs officer for the U.S.
Department of Agriculture
Stanley Prusiner, director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative
Diseases, professor of neurology at UCSF, founder of InPro
Biotechnology and awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology / Medicine in
1997
Michael Greger, BSE coordinator of the Organic Consumers Association
Gary Weber, executive director of regulatory affairs for the
National Cattlemen's Beef Association
[...]
Michael Greger: "In the European Union they banned the feeding of all slaughterhouse waste to livestock, and we should do that here in North America as well. Both in Canada and United States, we still allow the feeding of cattle remains to pigs and chickens; we still allow the feeding of blood and tallow as starter rations to a number of animals like young pigs and calves."
[...]
Host: "Do you have any of these same concerns, Stanley Prusiner, about what's acceptible in U.S. cattle feeds?"
Stanley Prusiner: "Yeah, I think that we shouldn't be using anything from ruminants in cattle feed; I think that's clear."
[...]
Stanley Prusiner: "I want to come back to Dr. Weber for a moment... Dr. Weber sees the USDA and the U.S. government and the cattle industry doing a great job in the United States. I see them as doing a terrible job in the United States. I think we have to be very clear--we have about a hundred million cattle in the United States, and we slaughter about a third of these every year. About one percent of this hundred million cattle are called downer cattle, or fallen cattle--they fall down and they die. And these animals just disappear. And when we talk about 19,000 cattle [tested last year in the United States for mad cow disease]--looking at those animals--they represent, most of that number represents fallen cattle. But that's 19,000 out of a million... so I think those numbers [of cattle tested in the U.S.] are appalling. I think the government has to do much, much more. And of course the fallen cattle are the ones with the highest risk; fortunately the fallen cattle don't enter the food chain. But we really need to understand what's happening, and we don't understand what's happening. And I think anyone who believes we understand what's happening is mistaken."
[...]
Host: "I do want to introduce Larry Hawkins, who's joining us from the U.S. Department of Agriculture... Can you talk a little bit about the potential for banning slaughterhouse items in feed for cattle which... is in fact the case in Europe and is not the case here."
Larry Hawkins: "Well, actually I can't."
[...]
Michael Greger: "Unfortunately, here in the United States fallen cattle do enter the food chain. According to investigations of USDA slaughter records, almost three quarters of cattle, downed cattle, that were too sick to stand were passed for human consumption--that was in 2001. I agree that the number of cows that we're testing is seriously inadequate and would like to ask Dr. Prusiner what level of testing he'd be comfortable with"
Stanley Prusiner: "Well, I'd like to see every downer cattle, every fallen cow tested. That's a beginning. And then after that, at some point, I'd like to see every cow tested, just as they do in Japan. Every single cow is being tested in Japan."
Host: "Wow... I'm sure that as far as the marketers in Japan are concerned, that's a big cost."
Stanley Prusiner: "No... this is not a huge cost compared to the cost of the cow, and the fact that we are dealing with fatal diseases in humans, and there's no treatment."
[...]
Caller: "Is there any way to test the beef that's already in the store?"
Stanley Prusiner: "Yes, about two years ago we reported that there are prions in muscle, in mice. Now there's been a report from Germany showing that... in hamsters, throughout the body, throughout the muscles all over the body (not just the hind ones that we found in mice) you find prions. They infected the animals orally. And we're now trying to find out which muscles, if any, in cattle carry prions..."
Host: "There actually was something I found on the National Cattlemen's Beef Association website that I as a consumer found confusing. The quote is that 'The BSE agent is not found in meat. It is found in central nervous system tissue such as brain and spinal cord,' so how are we seeing the link between eating the meat and getting--"
Stanley Prusiner: "The highest levels of prions are found in the central nervous system, meaning brain and the spinal cord. We find prions in lymphoid tissue. And until we did this study... people generally said there are no prions in muscle... The easiest place to detect the prions are the brain and the spinal cord... but nevertheless [the levels of prions found in muscle are] quite high and equivalent to that in lymphoid tissue."
Host: "Is that a concern of the USDA Larry Hawkins?"
Larry Hawkins: "Information that can be evaluated to determine if there is a risk to humans is of interest to us. And so when, as that information develops, if it turns out that that appears to be a risk then we would act on that."
[...]
Host: "I found it interesting that the FDA, in the wake of mad cow disease being such an explosion of news in Europe, restricted blood donations from people from Britain, but the USDA allows blood from the animals in cattle feed; it just seems like a bit of conflict there."
Larry Hawkins: "Again, that's an area I just can't speak to as a nonscientific person. I can only talk to you about the regulation that we have, and if it were considered to be a risk, based on a risk analysis system we would have had some restriction."
Host: "I'm sorry, but that is a regulatory question, isn't it? As to whether you're allowing the feed with blood to be fed for cattle?
Larry Hawkins: "I'm just not aware of what the nature of the restrictions are there."
[...]
Gary Weber: "Dr. Prusiner, my understanding was... [experts] did take tissues from cows with BSE and tried to infect other animals, and by virtue of the fact they were unable to do it with meat and blood, they used that to delineate those products that which were apparently not a risk with that type of bio-assay if you will. Could you comment on that?
Stanley Prusiner: "Yeah, I'd be glad to. You're right, they tried to do this, but in the end the studies were extraordinarily inadequate... The number of data points is so small in this study, and the number of questions is absolutely horrifying in terms of being so huge."
[...]
Michael Greger: "Mr. Weber from the Cattlemen's Association pointed out the Harvard study in 2001 as an example of how aggressive our safeguards are, but next year, 2002, the watchdog and audit arm of Congress, the General Accounting Office released their own report on the risk of mad cow disease and on how good our defenses are, and they found serious deficiencies. And I encourage everyone to read that at gao.gov..."
Host: "Gary Weber... your organization [the National Cattlemen's Beef Association] is going to face the criticism of being motivated by profit, you are in fact a marketing association for beef and cattle... I'd like you to address that."
Gary Weber: "...consumers know we are going to do the right thing, regardless of the cost... it is an issue of money. If people don't buy our product, we don't make any money, so we have to do what's right, and we are dedicated to doing that."
[...]
Host: "There's also a site of interest for the issue of downed cattle which Stanley Prusiner brought up, that's nodowners.org..."
[...]
Caller>/b>: "If, as Dr. Prusiner pointed out, it's not safe to feed pigs possibly contaminated feed, why [does the USDA still allow it?]..."
[...]
Host: "We did put that to our USDA representative and he felt he couldn't answer it. There's no one here from the pork association..."
[...]
Stanley Prusiner: "We've done a series of genetic engineering studies showing that the myocyte, or the actual muscle cell, is capable of making prions. There's no question about that. Coming back to the pig issue, it is the British who showed that they could transmit mad cow disease prions, BSE prions, into pigs. So, that's a fact. That's published, and the experiments are quite clear."
