January 28, 2004 The Denver Post  by Anne C. Mulkern

Dr. Stanley B. Prusiner, who won a Nobel Prize in 1997 for his discovery of prions - the infectious agent that causes mad cow disease - said the USDA doesn't really know how many mad-cow cases exist and probably doesn't want to know.

'The problem of prion contamination in the food supply will not disappear,' Prusiner said. 'The sooner we face the problem, a the more easily we shall be able to contain it.'

Prusiner spoke at a forum held by members of the House's Food Safety Caucus, the second congressional hearing of the day on the mad-cow situation.

Appearing before the Senate's Agriculture Committee, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said she is confident consumers are being protected.

Committee member Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., also expressed confidence in the USDA, saying 'U.S. beef is safe. When a single, (mad-cow)-positive cow was found in Washington state, our food-safety policy and safeguards worked.'

He ended his statement with the beef industry's ad slogan, saying, 'Remember this: Beef. It's still what's for dinner.'

Prusiner said the USDA's new testing program - 40,000 out of 35 million cattle - is designed to not find the disease.

If the U.S. tested every cow, as Japan does, he said, it would likely find 300 cattle or more with mad cow disease. Japan also has found cows with the disease that are younger than the age considered high risk for the illness.

Japan, along with several other countries, is refusing to take exports of American beef until the United States agrees to test every cow.

One member of the Food Safety Caucus, Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., agreed Tuesday that every cow should be tested for mad cow disease.

'The USDA has taken some belated steps in response to mad cow,' DeGette said.

But given the massive recall of tainted beef from a Colorado slaughterhouse last year and the new mad-cow scare, 'there is much more the department must do to ensure the safety of our meat supply.'

A spokeswoman for Veneman said Tuesday that there are a variety of opinions about what is necessary to isolate mad cow and that the USDA is looking at the best consensus of the scientific community.

'There is really no scientific justification for (testing every animal),' USDA spokeswoman Alisa Harrison said.

The USDA's testing exceeds that recommended by international guidelines, she said.

'Japan is different. Japan did not put any risk-mitigation measure in place until after they had (mad cow disease),' Harrison said.

The United States has had in place for several years a ban on cattle feed containing the remains of other cattle, and has taken the high-risk materials of brain and spine out of the food supply, steps Japan never took, she said.

Although some have described the risk of getting variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of mad cow, as very low, Prusiner said those statistics are meaningless because we don't know how many mad-cow cases really exist.

Very few cows are tested in the United States, he said, and the disease can take decades to appear. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is always fatal. It has killed about 150 people in Europe, mostly in Great Britain.

"If you look at human beings as a physician looks at them, it makes no difference what the statistic is," Prusiner said. "If a patient has CJD, they are going to die."