>
>
*http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/02/opinion/02SCHL.html?ei=1&en=187e49a57
1ff993a&ex=1074084856&pagewanted=print&position
> <HYPERLINK
"http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/02/opinion/02SCHL.html?ei=1&en=187e49a57
1ff993a&ex=1074084856&pagewanted=print&position"http://www.nytimes.com/2
004/01/02/opinion/02SCHL.html?ei=1&en=187e49a571ff993a&ex=1074084856&pag
ewanted=print&position>=*
> **
> *By ERIC SCHLOSSER*
>
> Alisa Harrison has worked tirelessly the last two weeks to spread the
> message that bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, is
> not a risk to American consumers. As spokeswoman for Agriculture
> Secretary Ann M. Veneman, Ms. Harrison has helped guide news coverage
of
> the mad cow crisis, issuing statements, managing press conferences and
> reassuring the world that American beef is safe.
>
> For her, it's a familiar message. Before joining the department, Ms.
> Harrison was director of public relations for the National Cattlemen's
> Beef Association, the beef industry's largest trade group, where she
> battled government food safety efforts, criticized Oprah Winfrey for
> raising health questions about American hamburgers, and sent out press
> releases with titles like "Mad Cow Disease Not a Problem in the U.S."
>
> Ms. Harrison may well be a decent and sincere person who feels she has
> the public's best interest at heart. Nonetheless, her effortless
> transition from the cattlemen's lobby to the Agriculture Department is
a
> fine symbol of all that is wrong with America's food safety system.
> Right now you'd have a hard time finding a federal agency more
> completely dominated by the industry it was created to regulate. Dale
> Moore, Ms. Veneman's chief of staff, was previously the chief lobbyist
> for the cattlemen's association. Other veterans of that group have
> high-ranking jobs at the department, as do former meat-packing
> executives and a former president of the National Pork Producers
Council.
>
> The Agriculture Department has a dual, often contradictory mandate: to
> promote the sale of meat on behalf of American producers and to
> guarantee that American meat is safe on behalf of consumers. For too
> long the emphasis has been on commerce, at the expense of safety. The
> safeguards against mad cow that Ms. Veneman announced on Tuesday --
> including the elimination of "downer cattle" (cows that cannot walk)
> from the food chain, the removal of high-risk material like spinal
cords
> from meat processing, the promise to introduce a system to trace
cattle
> back to the ranch -- have long been demanded by consumer groups. Their
> belated introduction seems to have been largely motivated by the
desire
> to have foreign countries lift restrictions on American beef imports.
>
> Worse, on Wednesday Ms. Veneman ruled out the the most important step
> to
> protect Americans from mad cow disease: a large-scale program to test
> the nation's cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
>
> The beef industry has fought for nearly two decades against government
> testing for any dangerous pathogens, and it isn't hard to guess why:
> when there is no true grasp of how far and wide a food-borne pathogen
> has spread, there's no obligation to bear the cost of dealing with it.
>
> The United States Department of Agriculture is by no means the first
> such body to be captured by industry groups. In Europe and Japan the
> spread of disease was facilitated by the repeated failure of
government
> ministries to act on behalf of consumers.
>
> In Britain, where mad cow disease was discovered, the ministry of
> agriculture misled the public about the risks of the disease from the
> very beginning. In December 1986, the first government memo on the new
> pathogen warned that it might have "severe repercussions to the export
> trade and possibly also for humans" and thus all news of it was to be
> kept "confidential." Ten years later, when Britons began to fall sick
> with a new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob syndrome, thought to be the
> human form of mad cow, Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg assured them
> that "British beef is wholly safe." It was something of a shock, three
> months later, when the health minister, Stephen Dorrell, told
Parliament
> that mad cow disease might indeed be able to cross the species barrier
> and sicken human beings.
>
> In the wake of that scandal, France, Spain, Italy, Germany and Japan
> banned imports of British beef -- yet they denied for years there was
any
> risk of mad cow disease among their own cattle. Those denials proved
> false, once widespread testing for the disease was introduced. An
> investigation by the French Senate in 2001 found that the Agriculture
> Ministry minimized the threat of mad cow and "constantly sought to
> prevent or delay the introduction of precautionary measures" that
"might
> have had an adverse effect on the competitiveness of the
agri-foodstuffs
> industry." In Tokyo, a similar mad cow investigation in 2002 accused
the
> Japanese Agriculture Ministry of "serious maladministration" and
> concluded that it had "always considered the immediate interests of
> producers in its policy judgments."
>
> Instead of learning from the mistakes of other countries, America now
> seems to be repeating them. In the past week much has been made of the
> "firewall" now protecting American cattle from infection with mad cow
> disease -- the ban on feeding rendered cattle meat or beef byproducts
to
> cattle that was imposed by the Food and Drug Administration in 1997.
> That ban has been cited again and again by Agriculture Department and
> industry spokesmen as some sort of guarantee that mad cow has not
taken
> hold in the United States. Unfortunately, this firewall may have gaps
> big enough to let a herd of steer wander through it.
>
> First, the current ban still allows the feeding of cattle blood to
> young
> calves -- a practice that Stanley Prusiner, who won the Nobel Prize in
> medicine for his work on the proteins that cause mad cow disease,
calls
> "a really stupid idea." More important, the ban on feed has hardly
been
> enforced. A 2001 study by the Government Accounting Office found that
> one-fifth of American feed and rendering companies that handle
> prohibited material had no systems in place to prevent the
contamination
> of cattle feed. According to the report, more than a quarter of feed
> manufacturers in Colorado, one of the top beef-producing states, were
> not even aware of the F.D.A. measures to prevent mad cow disease, four
> years after their introduction.
>
> A follow-up study by the accounting office in 2002 said that the
> F.D.A.'s "inspection database is so severely flawed" that "it should
not
> be used to assess compliance" with the feed ban. Indeed, 14 years
after
> Britain announced its ban on feeding cattle proteins to cattle, the
Food
> and Drug Administration still did not have a complete listing of the
> American companies rendering cattle and manufacturing cattle feed.
>
> The Washington State Holstein at the center of the current mad cow
> crisis may have been born in Canada, but even that possibility offers
> little assurance about the state of mad cow disease in the United
> States. Last year 1.7 million live cattle were imported from Canada --
> and almost a million more came from Mexico, a country whose
agricultural
> ministry has been even slower than its American counterpart to impose
> strict safeguards against mad cow disease.
>
> Last year the Agriculture Department tested only 20,000 cattle for
> bovine spongiform encephalopathy, out of the roughly 35 million
> slaughtered. Belgium, with a cattle population a small fraction of
ours,
> tested about 20 times that number for the disease. Japan tests every
cow
> and steer that people are going to eat.
>
> Instead of testing American cattle, the government has heavily relied
> on
> work by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis to determine how much of
a
> threat mad cow disease poses to the United States. For the past week
the
> Agriculture Department has emphasized the reassuring findings of these
> Harvard studies, but a closer examination of them is not comforting.
> Although thorough and well intended, they are based on computer models
> of how mad cow disease might spread. Their accuracy is dependent on
> their underlying assumptions. "Our model is not amenable to formal
> validation," says the Harvard group in its main report, "because there
> are no controlled experiments in which the introduction and
consequences
> of B.S.E. introduction to a country has been monitored and measured."
>
> Unfortunately, "formal validation" is exactly what we need. And the
> only
> way to get it is to begin widespread testing of American cattle for
mad
> cow disease -- with particular focus on dairy cattle, the animals at
> highest risk for the disease and whose meat provides most of the
> nation's fast food hamburgers.
>
> In addition, we need to give the federal government mandatory recall
> powers, so that any contaminated or suspect meat can be swiftly
removed
> from the market. As of now all meat recalls are voluntary and
remarkably
> ineffective at getting bad meat off supermarket shelves. And most of
> all, we need to create an independent food safety agency whose sole
> responsibility is to protect the public health. Let the Agriculture
> Department continue to promote American meat worldwide -- but empower
a
> new agency to ensure that meat is safe to eat.
>
> Yes, the threat to human health posed by mad cow remains uncertain.
> But
> testing American cattle for dangerous pathogens will increase the cost
> of beef by just pennies per pound. Failing to do so could impose a far
> higher price, both in dollars and in human suffering.
>
> /Eric Schlosser is author of "Fast Food Nation" and "Reefer
Madness."/"
>
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