Feds tighten meat rules
after mad cow found

CNN.com
December 30, 2003

Slaughter of sick animals banned; tracking system announced

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. government banned the slaughter of ailing "downer" cattle Tuesday and announced an aggressive animal tracking system, measures to keep mad cow disease out of the human food chain.

Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said the U.S. food supply and public health remains safe a week after the country's first case of mad cow disease was discovered in Washington state.

In the case announced by Veneman last week, the Holstein cow was identified as a downer -- which flagged the animal for testing but did not stop the meat from being processed and sold to the public.

Mad cow disease, known to scientists as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, is a brain-wasting disease usually transmitted to cows via contaminated feed and has an incubation period in animals of four to six years.

BSE is spread through the consumption of brain and spinal cord tissue that are sometimes ground into feed as a source of protein.

In 1996 a similar neurodegenerative disorder -- variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease -- was detected in humans and linked to mad cow disease in animals. Eating contaminated meat and cattle products is presumed to be the cause.

The ban affecting downer cattle -- those unable to walk because of injury or disease -- was one of several actions Veneman announced to halt the threat of mad cow disease. They include:

• A ban from the food supply of small intestines and head and spinal tissue from cows 30 months old or older.

• Changes in slaughterhouse techniques to prevent meat from being accidentally contaminated with brain, spinal cord or other nervous system tissue.

• A prohibition on the slaughter of tested animals until results come back. The Washington cow was slaughtered almost two weeks before tests showed it had BSE.

Veneman said downer cattle represent a small proportion of the animals processed in the United States, ranging from 150,000 to 200,000 of the 35 million head of cattle slaughtered each year.

She said the price of U.S. beef was not expected to rise as a result of the new rules.

A bill to prevent the slaughter of downer livestock was introduced in Congress earlier this year but failed to pass.

In addition to the regulatory changes, Veneman introduced an international panel of scientists to review the U.S. response to its first case of mad cow disease.

Veneman said the panel will operate in a manner similar to one appointed in Canada in response to a BSE case. The team will have some of the same scientists from that team.

The animal found to have carried the disease was unable to walk after giving birth. It was slaughtered December 9 in Moses Lake, Washington, prompting federal officials to recall more than 10,000 pounds of meat from animals slaughtered with it once it was diagnosed with BSE.

That meat eventually was shipped to eight states and Guam, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said. (Full story)

The USDA found that 81 cows entered the United States from the same herd in Alberta, Canada, where the infected dairy cow is thought to have originated. All 81 are being traced, said Ron DeHaven, the department's chief veterinarian.

U.S. and Canadian authorities banned the use of brain and spinal cord tissue in cattle feed in 1997, but the infected cow was born before the ban took effect, investigators said Monday.

Locating the cow's birth herd will allow them to track down the herd's other cows to see if they might have eaten the same contaminated feed.

A number of nations have banned U.S. beef imports since the case was announced last week, including Japan, South Korea, Australia, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Russia, Mexico and China.

In May, Canada reported its first BSE case -- in an 8-year-old beef cow slaughtered in January. That led a number of countries -- including the United States -- to restrict imports of Canadian beef.

The disease first appeared in the United Kingdom in the mid-1980s, and millions of cattle were slaughtered.

A small number of cases of the human form of the disease have been reported worldwide, primarily in the United Kingdom, among people who ate BSE-contaminated meat. At least 100 people have died worldwide, and outbreaks of BSE have led to large declines in beef consumption.

Critics of the meat industry have long called for some of the regulatory changes Veneman announced.

Gene Baur (formerly Bauston) , president of Farm Sanctuary, an animal rights group that has brought suits against the government for years to stop the use of downed animals, said the moves were significant.

"This is a good thing for animals and a good thing for people," Bauston told The Associated Press. "These animals are made to suffer horribly, humans are put at risk, and there has never been an excuse for this practice."

Several Democratic presidential candidates have seized on the issue, accusing the Bush administration of leaving the country vulnerable to mad cow disease.

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said the administration blocked attempts to ban beef from downer cows and resisted efforts to create a better system to track cows.

Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri said "Bush refuses to fund important country-of-origin labeling provisions for meat and has ignored the need for resources at the FDA and USDA to inspect the agricultural products coming across our borders."