- A day after the federal government assured people that
the nation's meat supply is safe, critics said the first apparent case
of mad cow disease discovered in the United States is the result of a flawed
industrialized food system.
-
- Since 1997, the government has created a firewall to
prevent an outbreak of the disease. The Food and Drug Administration banned
the use of dead ruminants -- sheep, goats and cows -- in feed intended
for live ruminants. Also, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it tested
more than 20,000 cows for the disease last year.
-
- But critics say there isn't enough enforcement of the
ban, the tests are lacking and that cows are still feeding on their own
kind.
-
- "This has been an ongoing problem for a long time.
... This was just an accident waiting to happen," said Lester Friedlander,
a former USDA veterinarian and federal whistle-blower who left the job
in 1995.
-
- He estimated there are 120 million U.S. cows and that
20,000 brain samples is "nothing." He also said downer cows --
those that are non-ambulatory -- should not be slaughtered for human consumption.
-
- Dr. Michael Greger, a public health expert who advises
the Organic Consumers Association on mad cow disease, said calves are separated
from their mothers and fed a "milk replacer," which often contains
spray-dried, red blood cells from cows. This is done to save dairy cows'
milk for human consumption.
-
- "By continuing to feed cow blood to cows, we're
creating the cannibalism circuit that these prions love so much,"
he said. Prions are the infecting agents that cause mad cow disease.
-
- Cattle also are exposed potentially to tainted feed through
chickens, which feast on cow remnants in their own feed and are then incorporated
into feed for bovines, he said.
-
- One local veterinarian, however, said chickens, as well
as pigs, are not susceptible to the agents that cause the disease.
-
- In Colorado, Sue Jarrett, a beef cattle operator, said
the Agriculture Department doesn't adequately enforce the feed ban. She
said most of the feed on the market contains an "animal byproduct"
and that she doesn't trust the government to ensure that the byproduct
isn't bone and meat from ruminants.
-
- "Nobody's enforcing (the ban)," said Jarrett,
who owns 150 head of cattle. "Who's out there checking?"
-
- Jarrett is a consultant for a national group of mostly
family farmers concerned about industrialized farming practices. Yesterday,
the group condemned the practice of implanting cattle with hormones and
feeding them antibiotics and "dead farm animals."
-
- "Mad cow disease is a red flag that exposes the
deadly flaws employed by our broken food system," Karen Hudson, a
consultant for the group, said in a written statement. The group is called
GRACE, which stands for Global Resource Action Center for the Environment.
-
- The practice of feeding meat and bone meal to cattle
is rare, said Clive Gay, a veterinary medicine professor at Washington
State University and director of the field disease investigation unit.
He also said there is no evidence that a cow has contracted the disease
from eating feed that included dead chickens that had eaten diseased cows.
-
- Patti Brumbach, executive director of the Washington
State Beef Commission, reassured the public that the meat supply is safe.
"We have the firewalls in place... The feed ban is there. We don't
import from countries that are high-risk for BSE."
-
- 1998-2003 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. All Rights Reserved.
-
- http://magazines.ivillage.com/goodhousekeeping/hb/news/article/0,,seattlepi_2003_12_25
_eng-seattlepi_eng-seattlepi_071738_990684072361291781~ew~xml,00.html
|
