Saturday, June 25, 2005
Mad Cow Case Confirmed
From The Washington Post:
New tests have confirmed that a Texas animal that federal officials earlier declared to be free of mad cow disease did have the brain-wasting ailment, the U.S. Agriculture Department announced yesterday.
The definitive testing, done in England over the past two weeks, showed that the ailing animal, first flagged as suspicious in November, was infected with mad cow disease. The animal was retested after the USDA's inspector general requested the additional check because of continuing concerns about the sample dismissed by the agency.
USDA Secretary Mike Johanns said that officials are just now trying to learn more about the origins of the animal, but that there is no indication that it was imported, as was the only other animal to test positive for the disease in the United States. That would make the newly identified animal the first born in this country found to have mad cow disease.
Johanns sought yesterday to assure consumers that U.S. beef is safe, and that any suspect beef would have been kept off supermarket shelves.
But he acknowledged a number of embarrassing mistakes and oversights by the agency. In addition to misdiagnosing the diseased sample, officials apparently mislabeled the sample that tested positive, officials said. According to USDA's chief veterinarian, John Clifford, a tag describing the breed of the infected animal was apparently mislabeled, an error that has slowed the process of determining where the animal came from.
Can the Bush Administration do anything competently except impugn the patriotism of its critics? They've screwed up the war in Iraq because they refused to put in enough troops or create a true world-wide coalition of nations to help with troop support, they've screwed up the environment because they either don't believe global warming exists or they have allowed the oil industry to create environmental policy, they've screwed up the federal budget by simulataneously cutting taxes and increasing federal spending 30-fold, and now they've screwed up the health of meat-eating Americans by allowing the cattle industry to make all of the important calls on regulation.
Don't believe me? Check out David Shuster's post at Hardblogger on the MSNBC site to see what I mean. I posted this a few weeks ago when the rumors about a confirmed mad cow case were hitting the internet, but here's another excerpt:
"At the moment, there appears to be an outbreak of mad cow disease in Japan... and American researchers are incredibly nervous that we may be on the verge of a deadly mad cow outbreak here in the United States. That’s what makes the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s approach so troubling.
As it stands, the U.S. Department of Agriculture refuses to even consider the main recommendations put forward by the World Health Organization that have stopped mad cow disease across Europe. What are these recommendations? The first is testing. The other is to stop the practice of feeding cow blood, tissue, and slaughterhouse waste to other cows.
I can hear some of you now: 'Come on, Shuster, that feeding practice is so grotesque it couldn’t possibly be happening in the United States.'
Actually, it is happening a lot. Sure, there are some livestock producers who don’t give their animals the kind of feed that contains cow blood or waste. But many livestock producers do.
And the fact is, much of the commercially produced calf feed available today contains the very stuff that could spread mad cow disease throughout our food chain.
What is the Department of Agriculture doing about this? Nothing. As I said, the Department of Agriculture refuses to even consider stronger regulations that would put an end to this disgusting practice. But it gets even worse. The department is doing everything it can to assure the public that our food chain 'is safe.' Thus, we have a ridiculous pep rally like the one on Thursday at the University of Minnesota. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns will, as his press release says, 'hold a roundtable discussion regarding the safety of North American beef...' Those invited to participate include USDA officials, producers, packers, and others.
Who are the others? Groups that don’t want more testing and don’t want the government passing regulations that would make calf feed cleaner and thus slightly more expensive. In fact, consumer groups, organic livestock companies, and beef producers who oppose allowing cows to eat cow blood and slaughterhouse waste will not be allowed to participate.
The irony is that if the Department of Agriculture really cared about the U.S. meat industry, the department would add a little pain now to prevent the industry from being decimated down the road when an outbreak occurs and nobody wants to buy U.S. meat. But once again, it’s all about short-term profits and paying back your political contributors. And consumers are left holding the bag... or in this case, mourning the deaths of loved ones who could die suddenly from the human form of BSE."
Or how about this report from the Associated Press on June 17, 2005:
WASHINGTON - American cattle are eating chicken litter, cattle blood and restaurant leftovers that could help transmit mad cow disease — a gap in the U.S. defense that the Bush administration promised to close nearly 18 months ago.
“Once the cameras were turned off and the media coverage dissipated, then it’s been business as usual, no real reform, just keep feeding slaughterhouse waste,” said John Stauber, an activist and co-author of “Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?”
He contended, “The entire U.S. policy is designed to protect the livestock industry’s access to slaughterhouse waste as cheap feed.”
Unlike other infections, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE, or mad cow disease, doesn’t spread through the air. As far as scientists know, cows get the disease only by eating brain and other nerve tissues of already-infected cows.
Ground-up cattle remains left over from slaughtering operations were used as protein in cattle feed until 1997, when an outbreak of mad cow cases in Britain prompted the U.S. to order the feed industry to quit doing it. Unlike Britain, however, the U.S. feed ban has exceptions.
For example, it’s legal to put ground-up cattle remains in chicken feed. Feed that spills from cages mixes with chicken waste on the ground, then is swept up for use in cattle feed.
Scientists believe the BSE protein will survive the feed-making process and may even survive the trip through a chicken’s gut.
That amounts to the legal feeding of some cattle protein back to cattle, said Linda Detwiler, a former Agriculture Department veterinarian who led the department’s work on mad cow disease for several years.
“I would stipulate it’s probably not a real common thing, and the amounts are pretty small,” Detwiler said. But still, if cattle protein is in the system, it’s being fed back to cattle, she said in an interview.
Cattle protein can also be fed to chickens, pigs and household pets, which presents the risk of accidental contamination in a feed mill.
The General Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said last month that a feed mill, which it did not identify, accidentally mixed banned protein into cattle feed. By the time inspectors discovered the problem and the mill issued a recall, potentially contaminated cattle feed had already been on the market for about a year, GAO said.
Boy, if I were a beef-eating American, I'd feel great knowing the Bushies were in charge of my safety. I'd especially feel great knowing that the Department of Agriculture allows a few short-sighted cattlemen worried about higher costs for grain feed to put the entire nation at risk by "allowing cows to eat cow blood and slaughterhouse waste." Just as the Bushies allowed ExxonMobil to make its Kyoto policy or allowed Phillip Cooney, ex-petroleum lobbyist and chief of staff for Bush's Council on Environmental Concerns, to edit out of government reports any links between petroleum emissions and global warming, the Bushies have allowed the cattle industry to make the call on food safety. Cuz' regulation harms the free market, you know?
And what about the little "mislabeling" of the tested sample? If I work for the Department of Agriculture and my job is to test beef for mad cow disease and I get one sample that tests positive out of the hundreds of thousands of negative samples I test every month, I'm going to take special care of that positive sample to make sure I can trace where the beef came from. But the fellas at the Department of Agriculture didn't take any special care of the sample and now they are having trouble tracing the animal. Oops! But hey, they got all those negative samples right!
Lastly, what about chickens and pigs eating feed with cow parts in it? You wonder if mad cow disease could be transmitted in some form to other animals, thus potentially contaminating the beef, chicken, and pork industries with mad cow disease. Boy, wouldn't that be a great for the beef, chicken, and pork industries, not to mention the American economy as a whole?
Whew. The more you find out about how Bush's Department of Agriculture and the animal feed industry work, the more you realize it is only a matter of time before some human beings contract mad cow disease from infected beef (let alone chicken or pork!). In fact, there may be a few people out there right now who have gobbled mad cow Big Macs and are already suffering from the early stages of the disease. I just hope when the outbreak hits that somebody holds the Bush Administration accountable for their fuck-ups and makes them change their industry-friendly policies.
Oh, and I also hope everybody enjoys their barbeques this weekend. Anybody want another tofu pup?
New tests have confirmed that a Texas animal that federal officials earlier declared to be free of mad cow disease did have the brain-wasting ailment, the U.S. Agriculture Department announced yesterday.
The definitive testing, done in England over the past two weeks, showed that the ailing animal, first flagged as suspicious in November, was infected with mad cow disease. The animal was retested after the USDA's inspector general requested the additional check because of continuing concerns about the sample dismissed by the agency.
USDA Secretary Mike Johanns said that officials are just now trying to learn more about the origins of the animal, but that there is no indication that it was imported, as was the only other animal to test positive for the disease in the United States. That would make the newly identified animal the first born in this country found to have mad cow disease.
Johanns sought yesterday to assure consumers that U.S. beef is safe, and that any suspect beef would have been kept off supermarket shelves.
But he acknowledged a number of embarrassing mistakes and oversights by the agency. In addition to misdiagnosing the diseased sample, officials apparently mislabeled the sample that tested positive, officials said. According to USDA's chief veterinarian, John Clifford, a tag describing the breed of the infected animal was apparently mislabeled, an error that has slowed the process of determining where the animal came from.
Can the Bush Administration do anything competently except impugn the patriotism of its critics? They've screwed up the war in Iraq because they refused to put in enough troops or create a true world-wide coalition of nations to help with troop support, they've screwed up the environment because they either don't believe global warming exists or they have allowed the oil industry to create environmental policy, they've screwed up the federal budget by simulataneously cutting taxes and increasing federal spending 30-fold, and now they've screwed up the health of meat-eating Americans by allowing the cattle industry to make all of the important calls on regulation.
Don't believe me? Check out David Shuster's post at Hardblogger on the MSNBC site to see what I mean. I posted this a few weeks ago when the rumors about a confirmed mad cow case were hitting the internet, but here's another excerpt:
"At the moment, there appears to be an outbreak of mad cow disease in Japan... and American researchers are incredibly nervous that we may be on the verge of a deadly mad cow outbreak here in the United States. That’s what makes the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s approach so troubling.
As it stands, the U.S. Department of Agriculture refuses to even consider the main recommendations put forward by the World Health Organization that have stopped mad cow disease across Europe. What are these recommendations? The first is testing. The other is to stop the practice of feeding cow blood, tissue, and slaughterhouse waste to other cows.
I can hear some of you now: 'Come on, Shuster, that feeding practice is so grotesque it couldn’t possibly be happening in the United States.'
Actually, it is happening a lot. Sure, there are some livestock producers who don’t give their animals the kind of feed that contains cow blood or waste. But many livestock producers do.
And the fact is, much of the commercially produced calf feed available today contains the very stuff that could spread mad cow disease throughout our food chain.
What is the Department of Agriculture doing about this? Nothing. As I said, the Department of Agriculture refuses to even consider stronger regulations that would put an end to this disgusting practice. But it gets even worse. The department is doing everything it can to assure the public that our food chain 'is safe.' Thus, we have a ridiculous pep rally like the one on Thursday at the University of Minnesota. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns will, as his press release says, 'hold a roundtable discussion regarding the safety of North American beef...' Those invited to participate include USDA officials, producers, packers, and others.
Who are the others? Groups that don’t want more testing and don’t want the government passing regulations that would make calf feed cleaner and thus slightly more expensive. In fact, consumer groups, organic livestock companies, and beef producers who oppose allowing cows to eat cow blood and slaughterhouse waste will not be allowed to participate.
The irony is that if the Department of Agriculture really cared about the U.S. meat industry, the department would add a little pain now to prevent the industry from being decimated down the road when an outbreak occurs and nobody wants to buy U.S. meat. But once again, it’s all about short-term profits and paying back your political contributors. And consumers are left holding the bag... or in this case, mourning the deaths of loved ones who could die suddenly from the human form of BSE."
Or how about this report from the Associated Press on June 17, 2005:
WASHINGTON - American cattle are eating chicken litter, cattle blood and restaurant leftovers that could help transmit mad cow disease — a gap in the U.S. defense that the Bush administration promised to close nearly 18 months ago.
“Once the cameras were turned off and the media coverage dissipated, then it’s been business as usual, no real reform, just keep feeding slaughterhouse waste,” said John Stauber, an activist and co-author of “Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?”
He contended, “The entire U.S. policy is designed to protect the livestock industry’s access to slaughterhouse waste as cheap feed.”
Unlike other infections, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE, or mad cow disease, doesn’t spread through the air. As far as scientists know, cows get the disease only by eating brain and other nerve tissues of already-infected cows.
Ground-up cattle remains left over from slaughtering operations were used as protein in cattle feed until 1997, when an outbreak of mad cow cases in Britain prompted the U.S. to order the feed industry to quit doing it. Unlike Britain, however, the U.S. feed ban has exceptions.
For example, it’s legal to put ground-up cattle remains in chicken feed. Feed that spills from cages mixes with chicken waste on the ground, then is swept up for use in cattle feed.
Scientists believe the BSE protein will survive the feed-making process and may even survive the trip through a chicken’s gut.
That amounts to the legal feeding of some cattle protein back to cattle, said Linda Detwiler, a former Agriculture Department veterinarian who led the department’s work on mad cow disease for several years.
“I would stipulate it’s probably not a real common thing, and the amounts are pretty small,” Detwiler said. But still, if cattle protein is in the system, it’s being fed back to cattle, she said in an interview.
Cattle protein can also be fed to chickens, pigs and household pets, which presents the risk of accidental contamination in a feed mill.
The General Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said last month that a feed mill, which it did not identify, accidentally mixed banned protein into cattle feed. By the time inspectors discovered the problem and the mill issued a recall, potentially contaminated cattle feed had already been on the market for about a year, GAO said.
Boy, if I were a beef-eating American, I'd feel great knowing the Bushies were in charge of my safety. I'd especially feel great knowing that the Department of Agriculture allows a few short-sighted cattlemen worried about higher costs for grain feed to put the entire nation at risk by "allowing cows to eat cow blood and slaughterhouse waste." Just as the Bushies allowed ExxonMobil to make its Kyoto policy or allowed Phillip Cooney, ex-petroleum lobbyist and chief of staff for Bush's Council on Environmental Concerns, to edit out of government reports any links between petroleum emissions and global warming, the Bushies have allowed the cattle industry to make the call on food safety. Cuz' regulation harms the free market, you know?
And what about the little "mislabeling" of the tested sample? If I work for the Department of Agriculture and my job is to test beef for mad cow disease and I get one sample that tests positive out of the hundreds of thousands of negative samples I test every month, I'm going to take special care of that positive sample to make sure I can trace where the beef came from. But the fellas at the Department of Agriculture didn't take any special care of the sample and now they are having trouble tracing the animal. Oops! But hey, they got all those negative samples right!
Lastly, what about chickens and pigs eating feed with cow parts in it? You wonder if mad cow disease could be transmitted in some form to other animals, thus potentially contaminating the beef, chicken, and pork industries with mad cow disease. Boy, wouldn't that be a great for the beef, chicken, and pork industries, not to mention the American economy as a whole?
Whew. The more you find out about how Bush's Department of Agriculture and the animal feed industry work, the more you realize it is only a matter of time before some human beings contract mad cow disease from infected beef (let alone chicken or pork!). In fact, there may be a few people out there right now who have gobbled mad cow Big Macs and are already suffering from the early stages of the disease. I just hope when the outbreak hits that somebody holds the Bush Administration accountable for their fuck-ups and makes them change their industry-friendly policies.
Oh, and I also hope everybody enjoys their barbeques this weekend. Anybody want another tofu pup?
