|
Mad
cow questions deserve answers
January 15, 04
Suzanne Havala Hobbs
Mad
cow disease.
It’s a creepy prospect -- a mysterious brain disease
that’s not fully understood, apparently caused by a
nonliving mutant protein that eats holes in brains.
As I wrote in June, the risk of any particular individual
contracting the human form of mad cow disease from contaminated
beef appears to be low. That probably hasn’t changed
much since the announcement of mad cow disease in the U.S.
But the consequences of mad cow disease are great -- certainly
to anyone who contracts the slowly incubating, always-fatal
illness and to the industries that have come to rely on cows
as the raw material for their products.
The mad cow crisis has brought some media attention to the
livestock industry and its stomach-turning, heart-ripping
practices -- reporting that isn’t news to vegetarians
like me.
But there are still many key questions that have gone unexplored.
Here are a few:
• Where are the nation’s public health officials?
The federal government’s point man during this crisis
appears to be Ron DeHaven, who is essentially the country’s
chief veterinarian. His purview is animal health, not human
health.
• Can the federal government demonstrate that it truly
has been testing cattle for mad cow disease? The U.S. Department
of Agriculture claims it tested 20,000 cows for mad cow disease
each year in 2002 and 2003, a fact the agency touts as proof
of its effort aimed at heading off a mad cow threat. But United
Press International reported late last month that it has been
seeking documentation of those tests from USDA for six months
-- with no success. USDA officials told UPI on Dec. 17 they
were still looking for the documentation.
• Will government agencies ramp up surveillance for
mad cow disease and start looking where they are most likely
to find it? Even if the U.S. does test 20,000 cows each year,
that’s still a tiny fraction of the number tested in
Europe and Japan. Worse, we test only some cows that make
it to the slaughterhouse, but not any of the estimated 4.1
million that die annually on farms. The General Accounting
Office, the investigative arm of Congress, recommended in
a 2002 report that the USDA begin testing these cows, as the
report said experts believe these animals are at highest risk
for being carriers of mad cow disease.
• Why hasn’t the government banned cattle nervous
system tissue -- the tissue most likely to be contaminated
with the misfolding proteins called prions that cause mad
cow disease -- from food and other consumer products? Why
hasn’t the Food and Drug Administration required labeling
to inform consumers about the foods most likely to be tainted
with cattle nervous system tissue, such as hot dogs, ground
beef, sausage, beef stock and beef flavoring?
• Will the government begin a more intensive investigation
of deaths from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD for short,
to determine whether any are actually victims of variant CJD,
the human form of mad cow disease? About 300 people in the
U.S. die each year from CJD, but only about half are autopsied.
Top CJD scientists were quoted by The Associated Press last
week saying better efforts are needed to assess whether any
of those deaths are actually from variant CJD.
Much remains unknown about the risks of mad cow disease. But
there is no reason why these and many other questions should
not be answered before the safety of beef and other products
made from cows can be assured.
|
