US beef producers resist banning of crippled cattle 17:23 30 December 03 NewScientist.com news service
The US meat industry is resisting the banning of crippled cattle from human food, despite the discovery of the first case of BSE in an American cow. The infected cow was a crippled or a "downer" cow, injured by the birth of a large calf.
The cow confirmed positive for BSE on 25 December, after it was slaughtered for food in Washington state earlier in the same month. Meat from the cow was recalled and its herd and offspring were quarantined.
The discovery confirms the longstanding warnings of European veterinary experts that BSE could be present in the US. But stringent controls, including banning crippled cattle from human food, have been resisted.
The US Department of Agriculture has been testing some 30,000 US cattle a year for BSE since 2001, targeting downers because European scientists found such cows were most likely to reveal the presence of BSE in a herd. A downer first revealed the presence of BSE in Canadian cattle in May 2003.
Some 20,000 downers are eaten yearly in the US. Canada and European countries have banned such cattle from human consumption. But the US National Cattlemen's Beef Association told journalists this week that it would continue to resist efforts to declare all downers unfit to eat.
Cattle feed ban
US officials are stressing that the infected cow was born in Canada. But Canadian agriculture minister Bob Speller told a press conference in Winnipeg on Monday that it might still have contracted the infection from cattle remains in feed that came from the US. The two countries' beef industries have been closely linked for decades.
The cow was born four months before a ban on using cattle remains in cattle feed took effect in the US and Canada in 1997. US officials stress that, even if there was some infection in the US herd then, the feed ban would have kept it from spreading.
But critics, including Swiss scientists who reviewed Canada's similar BSE controls earlier this year, say infection could still have spread. Cattle remains are still permitted in feed for chickens and pigs. When the European Union had similar rules, substantial BSE contamination still managed to enter cattle feed - leading European countries to ban cattle in all feed.
Cattle blood is also permitted in calf feeds in the US. Blood may carry BSE. A blood transfusion was suspected to have caused a case of the human equivalent, vCJD, in the UK, earlier in December (ref).
If any BSE is circulating in US cattle, US consumers may be at risk. The brain and spinal cord, which harbour most of the infection, are not removed from most cattle on slaughter. US studies revealed in 2002, that 35 per cent of mechanically recovered meat - the bits sluiced off carcasses and used to make processed meats such as hot dogs - contain such tissue.
Debora MacKenzie
