End the "Mad Cow" Madness

By Iain Murray, Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute on 12/17/2004
From Tech Central Station.com

On his first official visit to Canada, President Bush promised to end the madness: the United States' ban on Canadian beef. Such a move is long overdue. The ban has hurt producers and consumers in both countries -- for no public health gain.

Recent news of a second possible case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) -- popularly known as "mad cow disease" -- in the U.S. proved to be a false alarm when the tests came back negative. But the U.S. border remains closed to Canadian beef because of one confirmed BSE case found in Canada over a year ago.

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Mad-Cow Perspective

From The Providence Journal on December 16, 2004

About 35 million cows are slaughtered every year in the United States, give or take a few million. Only one was ever found to have mad-cow disease, and it came from Canada. Then, this fall, a suspected second case was announced.

Tests have subsequently proved that suspicion unfounded, but not before certain consumer activists tried to sow massive fear, and cattle investments swooned. The public should understand that had the cow indeed been infected, there would still have been no reason to panic. The risks of encountering a mad cow would still be minuscule.

Furthermore, you could eat the muscle meat of a "mad cow" in complete safety. Only the brain and spinal cord can pass serious illness to humans. Americans generally don't consume these central-nervous-system parts, which helps account for the lack of any human cases in the United States. (People do eat them in Europe, in things like meat pies.)

This is not to underplay the gravity of mad-cow disease. Humans who eat infected tissues can contract a horrible brain-wasting illness called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. It's just that the likelihood of this happening in the United States is close to zero, according to Harvard's Center for Risk Analysis.

Our system for protecting the beef supply appears to be working. American cows are no longer fed the animal parts that spread the disease. Furthermore, the Department of Agriculture now tests 6,000 "high-risk" cows a week. These tend to be animals older than three years (younger cows don't get the disease) or that show any symptoms of mad-cow disease, such as an inability to stand.

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U.S. Food Supply is the Safest in the World

By Yvonne Vizzier Thaxton on December 13, 2004
For Meatingplace.com

Shame on you, Mr. Thompson

There has been a lot of flack concerning former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson's comment about the vulnerability of our food supply. I do not agree with Mr. Thompson. I've thought a lot about the dangers to the food supply since 9/11 and have concluded that it isn't so easy to attack.

For complete article please visit Meatingplace.com

Threat of Mad Cow Disease Tests Effectiveness of Nation's Biosecurity

December 10, 2004 from Penn State University

University Park, Pa. -- With the most recent threat of mad cow disease on American soil revealed as a false alarm, a specialist in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences says consumers still can have confidence that the nation's beef supply is safe.

For original article please visit Penn State Live

'Public Citizen' Story: Being Way Wrong, Way Early Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

December 8, 2004 from JunkScience.com

When the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced on November 23, 2004 at about 6pm ET that the test in the most recent mad cow scare was negative, the agency had already been pre-empted (not really, read on please) by the anti-meat activist group Public Citizen, which had issued a media release on Nov. 23 at 9:37 am on Progressive Newswire.
Public Citizen's release said, however, "Today's announcement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that the United States has confirmed its second case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), known as mad cow disease, reinforces the need for federal regulators to close the loopholes that remain in our BSE prevention policies."

Not only was Public Citizen's media release wrong, but they were wrong about eight hours ahead of the USDA's announcement of the actual result.

Don't bother going to Progressive Newswire to look for the Public Citizen release -- the web site apparently was scrubbed long ago. But the media release does yet live on the web -- this copy was posted on some MSN group more than five hours ahead of the USDA's announcement.
Not only did Public Citizen jump the gun, but I think they were standing in front of the gun when it went off.

Jamaica Lifts U.S. Beef Ban

December 7, 2004 from the Associated Press
(Excerpt - for complete article please visit CNN.com)

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) -- Jamaica has lifted a ban on U.S. beef imports imposed last year after a single case of mad cow disease was detected in the United States, the agriculture minister said Tuesday.

After months of negotiations, Agriculture Minister Roger Clarke said Jamaica was satisfied that U.S. officials had contained the disease and implemented stringent measures on cattle and beef products to guard against a future outbreak.

But he said the island would continue to block the import of a small number of beef products like bone marrow and brain for safety reasons, as well as meat from cows older than 2 1/2 years, which are considered more susceptible to mad cow disease.

The agreement, which takes effect immediately, also ensures that all U.S. beef entering Jamaica must come from processing plants approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and derive from cattle not fed with animal byproducts like bone meal, Clarke said.

"We have lifted the ban, but we're specific as to the animals that come in," Clarke said in a telephone interview.

In a statement, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman praised Jamaica's decision, calling it an "important step forward in getting U.S. beef markets opened."

Jamaica was among several Caribbean countries to ban U.S. beef imports after a case of mad cow disease was detected in Washington state last December. Investigators traced the infected cow to Canada.

Complete article....