When the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) first detected Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as Mad Cow disease, in a cow in Northern Alberta in May 2003, the United States banned the importation of Canadian cattle. Severe economic repercussions resulted in both the U.S. and Canada. The halt on trade affected employment, cattle supplies and beef prices. The Canadian beef industry lost eight million dollars a day in sales, as Japan and twenty other nations joined the U.S. in banning Canadian beef.[i] In 2005, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) shifted its policy to allow the importation of cattle younger than thirty months of age from Canada and again in 2007 to allow the importation of Canadian cattle older than thirty months of age.[ii] The fact that there have been sixteen official cases of Mad Cow disease in Canada makes U.S. regulations problematic. The U.S. does not import cattle or beef products from the United Kingdom (184,594 cases of BSE) or Austria (six cases) or Finland (one case) or any other nations where cattle have been infected with BSE.[iii] However, the USDA makes special exceptions for its close trading partner Canada. With the opening of the border, Canadian beef exports to the United States totaled over one billion dollars in 2008.[iv] Market considerations have trumped human and animal health protections in the shaping of public policy in America. In looking at the history of the government’s BSE regulations and current public policy, this article examines the ways in which the USDA’s policies are posing undue risks to the health of cattle and consumers in the United States.

Along with scrapie (affecting sheep), variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (afflicting humans) and chronic wasting disease (plaguing elk and deer), BSE is in a category of progressively degenerative neurological diseases called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE). TSEs are transmitted through ingestion of nervous system tissue that contains the infectious agent, an abnormal version of a proteinacious particle that is naturally produced in the body, also known as a prion. Scientists theorize that BSE originated in the United Kingdom through livestock feeding practices. By rendering slaughterhouse waste into meat-and-bone meal and then including the high-protein ingredient in livestock feed, cattle ingested scrapie-infected feed. Once transmitted to cattle, the always fatal, brain-wasting disease spread through cattle herds in the UK when cattle byproducts containing infected offal were rendered, processed and fed to other cattle.[v] In 1996, epidemiologists in the UK realized that consumption of contaminated beef products by people caused a human form of Mad Cow disease. Called a new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), the transmissible spongiform encephalopathy has infected over 160 people in the United Kingdom to date, as well as people in other nations of Europe and North America, where there have been many suspected but unconfirmed cases.[vi] According to the OIE (World Organization for Animal Health), 190,493 cases of BSE have been confirmed in twenty-one nations of Europe, Japan, Israel, the United States and Canada as of June 2009.[vii]

In response to the worldwide BSE epidemic, the USDA developed protectionist livestock importation policies. In 1989, the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health and Inspection Service (APHIS) banned the importation of live ruminants (cattle, sheep, goats) and certain ruminant products, including most rendered protein products, into the U.S. from nations where animal health professionals confirmed previous cases of BSE. In 1997, APHIS extended those import restrictions to all nations of Europe and, subsequently in 2000, banned the importation of all rendered protein products of any animal species from Europe.[viii] In 1997, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the feeding of certain mammalian-derived proteins, including cattle, sheep, goats, deer, elk and bison, to ruminants, a measure generally referred to as the feed ban. The trade barriers, coupled with the feed ban, were intended to insulate American agriculture from BSE.

Despite the alarmingly high number of BSE-infected cattle detected in Canada since 2003, the U.S. has failed to apply its import restrictions to Canada. As soon as America banned Canadian cattle in 2004, the U.S. and Canadian beef industries mounted fervent protest, urging the USDA to reverse its policy. Bending to the pressure, the USDA conducted several studies to shape the future of public policy. On January 24, 2005, a USDA team reviewed Canada’s feed inspection program to assess the extent to which Canada’s feed control measures were achieving compliance with the ruminant feed ban. The USDA wanted to determine whether appropriate steps were being taken by Canadian officials to mitigate the spread of BSE. The USDA reported that “overall compliance with the feed ban is good” and concluded that “the feed ban is reducing the risk of transmission of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in the Canadian cattle population.”[ix] The USDA team found the CFIA inspection program to be “robust.”[x] CFIA inspection data showed compliance with feed regulations at feed mills to be in the ninety percent range, according to the USDA’s assessment.[xi]

Despite the positive review, the USDA team clearly detailed deficiencies in its report. Two-thirds of Canadian feed mills were not HAACP-certified (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point), which could bring into question production, quality and safety standards at those facilities. The USDA team inspected seven commercial feed mills and three rendering plants. In two of the seven feed mills, USDA inspectors discovered past and present instances of possible contamination of ruminant feed with prohibited materials.[xii] The feed mills were not taking proper precautions to prevent cross-contamination in processing and thus were not complying with feed ban regulations. In reviewing the CFIA’s inspection records, almost fifteen percent of feed mills received unsatisfactory ratings on specific tasks.[xiii] Twelve and a half percent of rendering plants received unsatisfactory ratings.[xiv] The report notes that “compliance cannot be immediately perfect upon implementation, and that compliance continues to increase as the program evolves.”[xv] The tolerance for error exhibited by the USDA in this statement is questionable, given that the CFIA instituted the feed ban in 1997, eight years prior to the USDA review, and that Canada’s ruminant feed ban did not prevent cattle born after the implementation of the feed ban from becoming infected with BSE. Moreover, in light of the fact that the USDA found serious deficiencies in two of the seven feed mills visited, it leads one to wonder what the USDA team would have found had they visited more of the ninety-two other mills that process materials banned from ruminant feed. Six months later, the USDA created a “minimal risk” region for Canada in its import restrictions.[xvi] The 2004-2005 American ban on Canadian cattle was short-lived. On July 15, 2005, the U.S. opened its border to Canadian cattle younger than thirty months of age.[xvii]

In 2006, the USDA wanted to resume unrestricted importation of Canadian cattle, but the agency needed justification for another shift in policy. The Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk at Tufts New England Medical Center conducted a risk assessment for APHIS. Titled “Harvard Model of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy: Implications of Importing Cattle Over Thirty Months of Age from Canada,” the computer simulation model considered factors involved in every aspect of the disease, including disease prevalence in the U.S. and Canada, feed industry practices, inspection processes, slaughtering practices, beef processing and human ingestion of infected materials. The study concluded:
“Overall the results indicate that any plausible introduction of BSE into the U.S. results in only a limited spread of the disease among cattle in this country. Equivalently, the results indicate that in the absence of a continual introduction of BSE into the U.S., its prevalence will decrease over time, eventually leading to its elimination. From this prediction, it follows that potential human exposure to the BSE agent would be limited.”[xviii]
After receiving the statistical reassurance, in 2007 the USDA allowed the importation of Canadian cattle over thirty months of age. The findings of the report and subsequent public policy are qualitatively and quantitatively offensive to any consumer of beef. Scientific knowledge of prion diseases is still in its infancy.[xix] The study embodies the hubris of the industrialized agricultural infrastructure in America; to expect a computer model to predict what will happen in nature and then to shape policies around those predictions accordingly. The legacy that industrialized agriculture will leave imprinted upon the decimated landscape is attempted scientific mastery of nature with unintended consequences and unsustainable results.

Canadian livestock practices, the ruminant-to-ruminant feed ban and government detection programs have failed to halt the spread of BSE in Canada. Of the sixteen official cases of BSE in Canada, eleven of the cattle were born after the feed ban.[xx] Canadian officials detected the most recent case of Mad Cow disease in May 2009. The animal was born in 2002, five years after the feed ban took effect.[xxi] The “discovery of another case of BSE in Canada is proof that the Canadian BSE surveillance system is working,” said an executive vice president of the American Meat Institute (AMI).[xxii] In the past three years, over ten million head of cattle have been slaughtered in Canada.[xxiii] The CFIA reported that as of July 2008 approximately 230,000 cattle had been tested for BSE since 2003.[xxiv] The miniscule surveillance hardly merits the optimism exhibited by some in the beef industry. Instead of complimenting the BSE test kit for working, a more realistic approach would be to admit that BSE is a problem that affects Canadian cattle. Since 2007, the year the U.S. cattle embargo was lifted, there have been eight cases of BSE in Canada.[xxv] Unequivocally, these statistics indicate that Canadian cattle are being fed ruminant byproducts containing BSE-infected material. The reality is that the CFIA’s BSE surveillance did not detect cattle infected with BSE, which were slaughtered, processed into livestock feed and fed to other cattle. Maybe mixed feed mills did not follow proper clean-out procedures, resulting in the co-mingling of animal feed destined for pigs and poultry with feed for ruminants. Perhaps there has been accidental or intentional mis-feeding on the farm. Defending the soundness of its policies, the CFIA claims, “As the level of BSE continues to decline, the periodic detection of a small number of cases is fully expected in line with the experience of other countries.”[xxvi] Two weeks after the most recent Canadian case of BSE, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) announced that “U.S. beef is safe.”[xxvii] Unfortunately, by allowing Canadian cattle to be imported into the U.S., the USDA’s policies do not guarantee the safety of U.S. beef.

In examining why the importation of Canadian cattle endangers cattle and people in the U.S., it is necessary to analyze the U.S.’s BSE-prevention regulations, which the USDA calls a “system of interlocking safeguards.”[xxviii] In addition to the aforementioned ruminant and ruminant-product import restrictions, since 1997, there have been prohibitions against feeding mammalian-derived proteins, with exceptions, to ruminants to protect animal health. In 2009, the FDA expanded the feed ban to prohibit cattle infected with BSE, brains and spinal cords of cattle older than thirty months, and mechanically-separated beef from being incorporated into all animal feed. Additionally, renderers must remove the brains and spinal cords from condemned cattle younger than thirty months if the firm wants to utilize the carcasses in rendering and feed processing.[xxix]

To ensure the safety of beef for consumers, since 2004, the USDA “has required that all beef slaughter and processing plants have in place controls to prevent materials that could potentially contain the BSE agent (referred to as specified risk materials or SRMs) from entering the human food supply.”[xxx] The buffers in the food system designed to protect consumers are: non-ambulatory cattle are banned from slaughter for human food; SRMs (skull, brain, spinal cord, vertebral column, eyes, dorsal root ganglia, trigeminal ganglia from cattle over thirty months of age and the tonsils and distal ileum of all cattle) are prohibited in the human food supply; mechanically-separated beef is banned from human food; and certain tissues associated with specified risk materials are banned from being used in Advanced Meat Recovery systems.[xxxi] The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) checks controls and procedures in meatpacking firms.[xxxii] The FSIS also conducts random sampling to verify that AMR products do not contain SRMs. Besides this and routine FSIS antemortem and postmortem visual inspection of all cattle and carcasses, there is no USDA premarket approval to guarantee that beef and beef products are free of BSE-laden materials.

The fourth safeguard in the USDA’s “aggressive measures to prevent the introduction and potential spread” of BSE is disease surveillance.[xxxiii] From June 2004 to March 2006, the USDA conducted the Enhanced BSE Surveillance Program to estimate the prevalence of Mad Cow disease in the United States. Of 647,045 samples of cattle brains that were tested for BSE, the USDA detected two infected cattle, one in Alabama in 2005 and one in Texas in 2006.[xxxiv] The USDA concluded an “extremely low” prevalence of BSE in domestic cattle, projected at less than one case per million head of cattle, and “most likely the number of cases is between four and seven infected animals out of forty-two million.”[xxxv] Ongoing surveillance is much more limited. The USDA will collect approximately 40,000 samples a year from cattle in “high risk subpopulations,” that is, animals showing signs of BSE and downers over the age of thirty months.[xxxvi] In contrast, Japan tests one hundred percent of cattle slaughtered for BSE. In the EU 15, mandatory testing for BSE is thirty months for healthy cattle and twenty-four months for at risk animals, although the EU is increasing the age for testing healthy animals to forty-eight months.[xxxvii] Ten million cattle are tested annually for BSE in the EU 15.[xxxviii]

The importation of Canadian cattle into America poses potentially dangerous consequences, because Canadian and American BSE regulations offer fragile bulwarks against the disease. The U.S. Entry Ban allows the importation of cattle from “minimal risk” Canada. In spite of the fact that eleven out of the sixteen cases of Canadian BSE have been caused by cattle eating infected feed after the CFIA instituted the feed ban, cattle from Canada are imported freely into the United States and slaughtered for human consumption. In 2007, 1.405 million head of cattle were imported from Canada, followed by another 1.581 million in 2008.[xxxix] R-CALF asserts, “The risk of introducing BSE into the United States from OTM [over thirty months] Canadian cattle is both heightened and compounded by the significant numbers of birth and feed cohorts of known BSE-infected Canadian cattle that have entered, and are most likely continuing to enter, the United States under the OTM Rule.”[xl] Cattle that consumed the same contaminated feed as the BSE-infected cattle likely were imported into the United States, slaughtered for human food, and processed in rendering plants for inclusion in non-ruminant feed. Exacerbating the problem of introducing diseased cattle into the country, the USDA’s enhanced BSE surveillance ended before the border completely opened to Canadian in 2007. The influx of Canadian cattle imports is coinciding with the decrease in BSE testing. Of the estimated thirty-five million cattle that will be slaughtered in 2009, including 1.5 million head imported from Canada, less than one percent will be tested for BSE.[xli] Consequently, too few cattle will be tested to gage the risk posed by Canadian cattle. If the USDA does not test cattle for BSE, the agency will not detect diseased animals. The Canadian loophole in the import restrictions is compounded by the USDA’s BSE “don’t ask, don’t tell” testing policy. BSE “surveillance” is a superficial measure designed to convince unknowing consumers that American beef is the safest in the world and appease agribusinesses that have to pay for costs accompanying regulations. The USDA is more concerned with ameliorating trading partners, placating meatpacking executives, and promoting beef sales than with the safety of the food supply.

It is likely that herd-mates of BSE-infected cattle have been and will continue to be imported into the U.S. It is possible that infected cattle have been and will continue to be imported unknowingly into the U.S. With ongoing testing centering on downers and BSE suspects, if those infected cattle are in the beginning of the clinical phase of BSE and do not show signs of the disease, they will pass visual inspection and be among the ninety-nine percent of cattle slaughtered in American that are not tested for BSE. Then beef and beef products from those diseased animals will enter the human food supply. Blood from those animals will be used as a milk replacer to wean calves. Byproducts from those animals will be used to make meat-and-bone meal to be included in animal feed. During the disassembly process, it is possible that cutting and sawing will spread infected tissue onto muscle meat destined to become cuts of beef, especially bone-in meat, and other products, such as hamburgers. If those cattle are under thirty months of age, then their brain, spinal cord, dorsal root ganglia, trigeminal ganglia, eyes and other infective tissue will not be banned from human food specifically. Accordingly, parts of those animals, some of which could contain specified risk materials, will be processed through technology called Advanced Meat Recovery to remove every sliver of meat from the carcasses. That AMR-meat containing possibly-contaminated materials will be made into processed meat products and purchased by consumers who will be unable to protect themselves, because the USDA does not require meatpackers to label AMR-beef as such. Consequently, consumers could ingest BSE-laden beef products. But the risk does not end there.

Not only is the Canadian feed ban wholly ineffective, but U.S. feed regulations lack the stringency necessary to truly safeguard animals from transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. In the United States, there is not a complete feed ban; there is not even a ban on all specified risk materials, or central nervous system tissue, in livestock feed. Recently, Canada instituted firmer feed regulations, banning specified risk materials from all feed. In comparison, Great Britain finally controlled its BSE outbreak when the nation established a total feed ban, prohibiting all cattle parts in all animal feed, including feed for pigs and poultry.[xlii] In the U.S., rendered ruminant byproducts, which could contain tissues carrying the infectious agent, are fed to non-ruminant farm animals.[xliii] TSEs are capable of crossing species barriers. The original vector for transmitting BSE to cattle was scrapie-infected feed. However, U.S. regulations permit cattle byproducts to be fed to pigs and chickens. There exists the danger of TSEs spreading to other species of livestock. More troublesome, accidental contamination of ruminant feed with prohibited materials in feed mills or misfeeding on farms could lead to cattle consuming feed that contains ruminant byproducts. Even if industry members comply with the feed ban, cattle could be ingesting proteins of ruminant origin. Ingredients allowed in ruminant feed include porcine, equine and poultry byproducts (including feathers) and poultry litter. Plate waste from restaurants, leftover T—bone steaks, hamburgers and hot dogs, are also allowed as ingredients in the processing of cattle feed. Since poultry feed contains recycled cattle byproducts, if some spills during distribution, chicken litter could include ruminant proteins, which will then be reprocessed back into ruminant feed. Even before Canada expanded its feed ban, it did not permit poultry litter or plate waste in ruminant feed. If BSE-infected cattle are imported into the U.S. from Canada, it is entirely possible for those cattle to enter rendering channels, where the carcasses will be made into meat-and-bone meal and processed as ingredients in livestock feed.[xliv] And if a mistake occurs somewhere along the line in cattle production, then BSE-ridden feed will be fed to cattle. BSE, as a result, will spread to cattle in the United States. The prohibition of all animal proteins from farm feed is a necessary preventative measure, as it eliminates the possibility of human error leading to cattle eating contaminated feed. Neither Canadian nor American regulations prevent that possibility yet.

Denial of the risk involved is futile. This scenario has already happened. The first official case of BSE in the U.S. involved a Holstein that was born and reared in Canada and subsequently imported into the U.S. Upon arriving at a slaughter plant in Washington in December 2003, the cow was non-ambulatory, a downer. Still, it passed antemortem visual inspection by a FSIS inspector and was slaughtered for human consumption. Beef from the infected cow, along with beef from twenty other cattle slaughtered at the same time, was distributed to forty-two outlets in eight states and the territory of Guam.[xlv] Two weeks after the cow was slaughtered, the FSIS recalled 10,410 pounds of meat in a Class II Recall.[xlvi] In short, a Canadian cow infected with BSE was imported into the United States and slaughtered for food, its beef entering the human food chain. In conducting the epidemiological investigation, APHIS officials never located fifty-two cattle that were imported into the U.S. with the BSE-infected cow.[xlvii] APHIS was unable to find eleven of twenty-five herd-mates that likely ingested the same contaminated feed that caused the cow to become infected with BSE.[xlviii] The possibility exists that those animals were infected with BSE and slaughtered for human food and animal feed. Consumers will never know if they ate steak, hamburgers, hot dogs or any other processed beef products from those possibly infected cattle. Consumers will never know what exactly is on their dinner plates.

The USDA has spent millions of dollars on the institution of National Animal Identification System (NAIS) and Country of Origin Labeling (COOL). Both controversial initiatives have been plagued by a myriad of issues. Instead of simply testing more cattle for BSE, the USDA established programs to track diseased animals and identify the nations from which livestock originate. These USDA initiatives fail to make the food system safer. In fact, the USDA has blocked private efforts to test cattle for BSE. The USDA prevented Creekstone Farms Premium Beef from testing for BSE the cattle the firm slaughtered in its own slaughterhouse. The USDA argues that BSE is not a food safety issue and that government surveillance is sufficient to detect any cases of BSE.[xlix] In this era in which corporate profits are paramount and laissez-faire policies are the standard, it is politically easier for the USDA to maintain a facade of perfunctory regulations than to impose rigorous safety standards that actually protect consumers. BSE is a horrifying disease with cross-species capabilities, and despite the USDA’s denial, BSE is a food safety issue. Ask the families of the victims of vCJD who witnessed their loved ones progress from depression and psychotic behavior to dementia, memory loss, in-coordination and loss of feeling and finally to coma and death.

If the U.S. will not test cattle for BSE for the sake of public health, then policymakers should consider the economic benefits of increased testing. It has been estimated that eleven billion dollars in foreign sales have been lost to the American beef industry since the occurrence of the Washington State case of BSE.[l] Industry leaders claim that thin profit margins preclude testing, but annual beef prices set a new record in 2008 at 4.33 dollars per pound.[li] The retail equivalent value of the beef industry totaled seventy-six billion dollars in 2008.[lii] Additionally, the USDA’s budget authority totals 134 billion dollars in 2010.[liii] If the USDA and meatpackers devised a cost-sharing plan for increased testing for BSE, it would serve as a cost-effective marketing strategy for regaining lost markets. Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc.’s rapid test TeSeE® for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy costs between ten and twenty dollars each, an affordable method of guarding the largest sector of American agriculture. Increasing testing for BSE will protect consumer health, preserve the future of the beef industry, and expand trading opportunities.

BSE policy represents a confluence of complicated issues: food safety, consumer awareness, animal health, government regulation, corporate power and influence, sustainable farming versus industrialized agriculture, private property, scientific discovery and the great unknown. Adding to the complex factors that influence policy-making are the economic implications of public policy changes in a time of recession. Although the FDA expanded the ruminant feed ban in 2009, government policy has not gone far enough until it institutes a total ban on all animal protein in feed for all animals. Canadian efforts to mitigate the spread of BSE have been ineffective. Present USDA import policies are risking animal health and endangering the food supply. U.S. import guidelines regarding Canadian cattle need to be examined and revamped with the health and welfare of American livestock and lives in mind. Canadian cattle imports should be banned.

The USDA should test more than 40,000 cattle BSE every year. But APHIS’s Entry Ban will not be revised and BSE surveillance will not be re-enhanced unless a catastrophe occurs. American food and drug oversight has been and always will be reactive. The Bush Era featured deregulation accompanied by government complacency. Coupled with corporate hegemony of food production in America, the current food system leaves much to be desired in terms of safety. The USDA is an agency that has difficulties balancing its conflicting mandates: to promote and regulate agriculture. Stakeholders can only hope that the lack of proactive policy does not result in a BSE epidemic that will endanger animal and human health. When it comes to eating beef, for the time being, it is the responsibility of each consumer to safeguard his or her own health.[liv] The question is: should it be?

[i] Bette Hileman, “Why America is at risk for Mad Cow Disease,” Organic Consumers Association, originally from Chemical and Engineering News, 4 August 2003, <www.organicconsumers.org/madcow/america_mad_cow.cfm> (5 June 2009).
[ii] Since 2007, there has been unrestricted importation of cattle born after 1999 from Canada into the U.S., in addition to the importation of meat and meat products from cattle of any age, blood and blood products, and casings from small intestines. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Marketing and Regulatory Programs, Animal and Plant Health and Inspection Service, “Implementation: Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy; Minimal-Risk Regions and Importation of Commodities from Canada,” 14 November 2007, <http://www.aphis.usda.gov/newsroom/hot_issues/bse/background/documents/Canada%20MRR2_ImportWebAlert_v7_10-31-07.pdf> (31 May 2009).
[iii] World Organization for Animal Health, “World Animal Health Situation,” 16 June 2009, <http://www.oie.int/eng/info/en_esbmonde.htm> (7 July 2009), Number of Reported Cases Worldwide.
[iv] CanFax Research Services, “Statistical Briefer,” February 2009, <www.canfax.ca/Samples/StatBrf.pdf> (31 May 2009), Canadian Beef Export Markets; U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, “U.S. Beef and Cattle Industry: Background Statistics and Information,” 10 June 2009, <http://www.ers.usda.gov/news/BSECoverage.htm> (9 July 2009).
[v] In 1984, the first cases of BSE were detected in ten cows on a farm in West Sussex, one hour south of London. For the fascinating story of the BSE epidemic in Great Britain, read Mark Jerome Walters, Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them (Washington: Island Press, 2003), Ch. 1 The Dark Side of Progress: Mad Cow Disease. Between November 1986 and July 2001, BSE infected over 178,000 cattle in 35,000 herds in the United Kingdom. The BSE epidemic peaked in 1993; animal health officials reported 1,000 new cases every week. These statistics are found in U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health and Inspection Service, “Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy: An Overview,” October 2001 <http://www.aphis.usda.gov/lpa/pubs/pub_ahbse.html> (2 June 2009), History.
[vi] See website http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow.cfm for information and statistics pertaining to BSE and vCJD. Whereas the National Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance Unit (NCJDSU) in Edinburgh, Scotland conducts surveillance of vCJD in the United Kingdom, the United States does not have an official surveillance program for vCJD. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention disseminates information about vCJD and monitors cases of the disease, but the U.S. government does not have a dedicated, official group of neurologists and epidemiologists tracking and studying cases of vCJD. Interestingly, for other food-borne pathogens that cause human disease, the U.S. government has several surveillance programs, including FoodNet and PulseNet. The CDC, FDA and USDA work closely in monitoring food-borne disease outbreaks due to E. coli 0157:H7, Salmonella, Campylobacter, Shigella, Listeria and other pathogens. The U.S. government has not recognized that the prion disease vCJD belongs in that category of food-borne, infectious diseases.
[vii] OIE, “World Animal Health,” Number of Reported Cases Worldwide.
[viii] U.S. Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services, “Federal Measures to Mitigate BSE Risks: Considerations for Further Action, “ 14 October 2004, <http://www.fas.usda.gov/info/fr/2004/071404BSEFDA3.htm> (16 June 2009), Prevention of BSE in the United States; APHIS, “BSE: An Overview,” USDA Actions in Response to BSE.
[ix] U.S. Department of Agriculture, “U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Assessment of the Canadian Feed Ban,” February 2005, <www.aphis.usda.gov/newsroom/hot_issues/bse/background/documents/final.doc> (23 June 2009), 2.
[x] Ibid.
[xi] Ibid., 4, 23. See article by Pete Hisey, “U.S. Releases Technical Review of Canadian Feed Ban,” 28 February 2005, <www.aamp.com/news/technicalreview.asp> (31 May 2009).
[xii] USDA, “Assessment of the Canadian Feed Ban,” 32-33.
[xiii] Ibid., 21, 25.
[xiv] Ibid., 29.
[xv] Ibid., 4.
[xvi] Certain assumptions form the basis of the USDA’s policies regarding BSE. In terms of disease progression, the USDA believes that cattle become infected with BSE very early in their lives and the incubation period lasts from four to eight years. The clinical phase, in which cattle show symptoms, lasts between two weeks and six months, until death occurs. The agency considers it highly unlikely that cattle younger than thirty months could be infected. Consequently, the agency’s rules are based on the assumption that younger animals are minimally at risk of being infected with BSE. The USDA uses the differentiating point of thirty months of age as a basis for its regulations. Current tests used by the USDA cannot detect infection until animals are in the clinical phase of the disease. As a result, the USDA does not routinely test younger cattle for BSE. The USDA’s BSE surveillance targets animals that are most likely to carry the disease, cattle older than thirty months of age. The safeguards in the food system also differ depending on the age of the cattle. Specified risk materials (nervous system tissue that could carry the disease) from cattle older than thirty months are banned from human food. SRM-prohibitions do not specifically apply to carcasses of cattle younger than thirty months. There is some evidence that disease onset could occur earlier in the lifespan of infected cattle. Early in the UK’s BSE epidemic, before the government centralized efforts to test cattle and control the disease, almost one hundred cattle younger than thirty months exhibited symptoms of BSE. According to official statistics in the UK, in 1996, a twenty-nine month old animal tested positive for BSE. In 2005, two cattle in Japan were suspected of being infected with BSE. One animal was twenty-one months old, and the other was twenty-three months old. To date, those cases in Japan are considered unresolved and controversial. Since BSE is a brain disease that scientists have been studying for less than two decades, there are many unknowns, and new discoveries are made every year. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health and Inspection Service, “Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy: An Overview,” December 2006, <http://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/animal_health/content/printable_version/BSEbrochure12-2006.pdf> (22May 2009), What Causes BSE and How It Progresses; BSE Info, “Detection of Cases,” 2009, <http://www.bseinfo.org/scieDetectionofCases.aspx> (22 May 2009).
[xvii] APHIS Veterinary Services, “Questions and Answers for Minimal-Risk (Canada) Rule,” July 2005, <http://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/animal_health/content/printable_version/faq_ahbse_minrisk.pdf> (1 July 2009).
[xviii] Joshua T. Cohen, “Harvard Model of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy: Implications of Importing Cattle Over Thirty Months of Age from Canada,” 27 October 2006, <http://www.aphis.usda.gov/newsroom/hot_issues/bse/downloads/HarvardModel06-041-1.pdf> (23 May 2009), 27.
[xix] See Stanley Prusiner’s research on prions at http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/data/prusiner/245.dtl.
[xx] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or Mad Cow Disease,” 16 June 2009, <http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/bse/> (8 July 2009), BSE Cases Identified in Canadian-born cattle.
[xxi] R-CALF USA, “USDA Continues to Expose U.S. to Unnecessary Risk: 17th BSE-Infected Cow is Canada’s 10th Born After March 1, 1999,” 18 May 2009, <http://www.r-calfusa.com/news_releases/2009/090516-usda.htm> (31 May 2009).
[xxii] Dow Jones Newswire, “Packers Say No Effect From Mad Cow,” Weekly Times, 19 May 2009, <http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2009/05/19/79275_cattle.html> (30 May 2009).
[xxiii] In 2006, 3,543,000 cattle were slaughtered in Canada. In 2007, 3,422,400 were slaughtered, and in 2008, 3,468,000 cattle were slaughtered. CanFax, “Statistical Briefer,” Canadian Cattle Slaughter.
[xxiv] Canadian Food Inspection Agency, “BSE Enhanced Surveillance Testing and Sampling Information,” 2008, <www.inspection.gc.ca/english/anima/heasan/disemala/bseesb/surv/sampe.shtml#test> (31 May 2009).
[xxv] In 2007, the CFIA detected three BSE-infected cattle (one in February, one in April, and one in December). In 2008, the Canadian government detected four cattle positive for BSE (February, June, August, November). There has been one BSE-positive animal in 2009, detected in May. Canadian Food Inspection Agency, “BSE Enhanced Surveillance Program,” 25 May 2009, <http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/anima/heasan/disemala/bseesb/surv/surve.shtml#num> (16 July 2009).
[xxvi] Canadian Food Inspection Agency, “BSE Case Confirmed in British Columbia,” 23 June 2008, <http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/anima/heasan/disemala/bseesb/bccb2008/13notavie.shtml> (4 June 2009).
[xxvii] Dow Jones, “Packers Say No.”
[xxviii] APHIS Veterinary Services, “Factsheet: USDA’s BSE Surveillance Efforts,” July 2006, <http://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/animal_health/content/printable_version/fs_BSE_ongoing_vs.pdf> (10 June 2009).
[xxix] After being delayed, the final rule went into effect on June 26, 2009. “Cattle Material Prohibited in All Animal Feed” also includes tallow derived from materials prohibited in this rule that contain more than .15 percent insoluble impurities. Food and Drug Administration, “Substances Prohibited from Use in Animal Food or Feed; Final Rule,” Federal Register 73, no. 81 (25 April 2008), <http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/08-1180.htm> (16 May 2009), Summary.
[xxx] Bridgette A. Keefe, Congressional and Public Affairs, Office of Public Affairs and Consumer Education, Food Safety and Inspection Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, “FSIS BSE Inquiry,” 3 June 2009, personal email, (16 July 2009).
[xxxi] APHIS Veterinary Services, “Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) Ongoing Surveillance Plan,” 20 July 2006, <http://www.aphis.usda.gov/newsroom/hot_issues/bse/downloads/BSE_ongoing_surv_plan_final_71406%20.pdf> (11 June 2009), 4.
[xxxii] Keefe, “FSIS BSE.”
[xxxiii] APHIS, “Factsheet: USDA’s BSE Surveillance.”
[xxxiv] Centers for Epidemiology and Animal Health National Surveillance Unit, “Summary of Enhanced BSE Surveillance in the United States,” 27April 2006, <http://www.aphis.usda.gov/newsroom/hot_issues/bse/content/printable_version/SummaryEnhancedBSE-Surv4-26-06.pdf> (11 June 2009), 4. The first official case of BSE in the U.S. was detected in December 2003 in Washington State. The Holstein had been imported from Canada.
[xxxv] APHIS, “Factsheet: USDA’s BSE Surveillance.”
[xxxvi] APHIS Veterinary Services, “(BSE) Ongoing Surveillance Plan,” 6-10.
[xxxvii] The EU 15 refers to the number of member countries of the European Union before the expansion in May 2004.
[xxxviii] U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service, “EFSA publishes two opinions on BSE testing levels in cattle, “ 2008,<www.fas.usda.gov/gainfiles/200807/146295239.pdf> (27 June 2009).
[xxxix] Economic Research Service, “U.S. Beef and Cattle Industry,” U.S. cattle imports from Canada.
[xl] R-CALF USA, “Letter to Secretary Vilsack: Request and Recommendation for an Immediate Response to Canada’s 17th BSE-Positive Cow,” 16 May 2009, <http://www.r-calfusa.com/BSE/090516-LetterVilsackCanadianBSECase.pdf> (4 June 2009). The letter gives specific examples.
[xli] The estimated number is based on the 34.4 million head of cattle that were slaughtered in the U.S. in 2008. Economic Research Service, “US Beef and Cattle Industry,” U.S. commercial slaughter.
[xlii] In 1996, the UK instituted a total feed ban. Since 2001, the EU has banned the feeding of mammalian proteins to all farmed animals. See D. Matthews and B.C. Cook, “The potential for transmissible spongiform encephalopathies in non-ruminant livestock and fish,” Rev. Sci. Tech. 22(1), 2003, <http://www.oie.int/boutique/extrait/18matthews.pdf> (16 July 2009), 283-296.
[xliii] See the article by Diane Farsetta, “The Cows Have Come Home,” prwatch.org, 7 September 2005, <www.prwatch.org/nodo/3968> (5 June 2009). The article explores the financial impact of food safety regulations upon agribusinesses, and consequently, how agribusinesses employ lobbyists to influence government rules regarding BSE. The author notes that every year specified risk materials from all slaughtered cattle totals 684,000 tons. Banning SRMs from being rendered into animal feed would erase seventy-two million dollars in profits to the livestock industry each year. Additionally, the disposal costs of the banned offal would total an estimated fifty-five million dollars a year.
[xliv] Disabled, diseased and dying cattle, called downers, are more likely to be infected with BSE, but only a small number of downer cows are tested for the disease. Before 2003, the USDA permitted downer cattle to be slaughtered for human food. Even when FSIS inspectors condemn downer cattle and prevent them from becoming food for humans, those cattle enter rendering facilities, eventually becoming ingredients in animal feed. For interesting reading on the link between downers and the propagation of BSE, in addition to other information pertaining to TSEs, read Dying for a Hamburger: Modern Meat Processing and the Epidemic of Alzheimer’s Disease by Murray Waldman and Marjorie Lamb.
[xlv] American Association of Meat Processors, “Case of BSE in the United States: Chronology of Events,” 2004, <http://www.aamp.com/foodsafety/documents/BSETimeline.pdf> (2 July 2005).
[xlvi] All recalls are listed on the FSIS website http://www.fsis.usda.gov/.
[xlvii] U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health and Inspection Service, “Summary Report Epidemiological Investigation of Washington State BSE Case,” March 2004, <http://www.aphis.usda.gov/newsroom/hot_issues/bse/downloads/WashingtonState_epi_final3-04.pdf> (26 June 2005), Details Regarding Cohorts.
[xlviii] Ibid.
[xlix] See article by Jonathan Turley, “Creekstone Farms Slaughtered by USDA,” ReclaimDemocracy.org, originally from Los Angeles Times, 20 April 2004, <http://reclaimdemocracy.org/articles_2004/usda_slaughter_creekstone.html> (15 April 2009).
[l] “USMEF: Fallacy of Overreliance on Testing,” The Dairy Site, 20 October 2008, <http://www.thedairysite.com/bse-news/24755/usmef-fallacy-of-overreliance-on-testing> (5 June 2009).
[li] Economic Research Service, “U.S. Beef and Cattle Industry,” U.S. beef prices.
[lii]Ibid., Retail equivalent value of U.S. beef industry.
[liii] See USDA website at http://www.usda.gov/.
[liv] Part II will feature affordable and healthy alternatives to mainstream, commercially-produced beef.