The Madness Continues: An Update on Mad Cow Disease and the Pushers Who Peddle It

by Larry DeWitt

Since we last considered the circus surrounding Mad Cow disease (see "It's Not the Cows Who Are Mad," January 2, 2004) there have been, shall we say, developments. We might be tempted to call some of it progress, but the record is too mixed for such a simple verdict.

You recall that in my January 2nd column I argued that is was a virtual certainty there are more infected cows already in the American food supply, and that there are only two rational ways to deal with this ongoing threat: either inspect 100% of the cattle going to slaughter, or ban entirely the practice of feeding animals parts to cattle to fatten them up. (A third approach would be to close-down the American cattle industry and import all our beef from Argentina, where they still feed their cattle on a natural grass-based diet. But red-white-and-blue patriot that I am, I did not urge this course.)

At the time I made these suggestions, the cattle industry and the Department of Agriculture were basically in denial, trying to feed us the idea that it was somehow foreigners (those Canadian cows) who were to blame. And that if America just closed its borders to these diseased foreigners, all would be well. But jingoism (even that against cloven-hoofed foreigners) can only take us so far. So on January 21st the Secretary of Agriculture announced the government's intention to design some type of I.D. system for cows, so that we could say with certainty where a particular diseased cow came from (so we can blame the foreigners and have proof). By the end of the month, the Department of Agriculture took additional baby-steps, finally announcing a regulatory ban on adding cow brains to human cosmetics and dietary supplements; banning the feeding of chicken waste to cattle (but not, oddly enough, the feeding of cattle to chicken); prohibiting the practice of retrieving the food garbage from restaurants and putting this back into cattle feed; and banning the practice of collecting the buckets of blood from slaughterhouse floors and dumping it back into the feed of the cattle still in the feedlots.

But the Bush Administration wants to appear to be a resolute defender of the nation's security, so it has been busy in other ways as well. On Monday, February 2nd, the Administration released its 2005 budget plan, under which the Department of Agriculture received the largest budget cut of any domestic agency (an 8.1% reduction from its 2004 spending level). But not to worry, the Bush Budget increased spending for Mad Cow inspections from $34 million to $46 million. This will allow the government to increase its inspections of slaughtered cattle-from about 20,000 last year to a whooping 27,000 in 2005. Out of a cattle population of about 40 million which are killed and processed each year. I know this makes me feel whole bunches more secure!

...there is even a serious possibility that some cases of Alzheimer's may be mis-diagnosed cases of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease-and the discouraging and dramatic rise in Alzheimer's cases in recent years might be a symptom of the already widespread effects of Mad Cow in humans.

Two days after offering its budget plan, the Bush Administration received the report of an international panel of experts commissioned by the Department of Agriculture to study the Mad Cow threat and recommend an appropriate public policy response. To the consternation of the Administration, the panel of three Europeans, one American, and one New Zealander, concluded that there is a "high probability" that there are more infected cattle in the American food supply than the single case uncovered last year. The panel concluded the disease has likely already spread throughout the U.S. beef herd, and they projected the occurrence of at least one new case of Mad Cow disease per month for the indefinite future. The panel modestly recommended that the U.S. test all 195,000 rendered cattle each year that are too ill to walk to their deaths ("downer" cattle and those already dead before transport to the slaughterhouse), and that the U.S. ban the feeding of beef brains and nervous tissue to all other animals (including the household pets who presently consume this matter in their pet food). These fairly tepid recommendations resulted in howls of protest from the cattle industry, which complained that it would cost them $700 million a year to comply. (Ah, it's about the money, still.) The National Cattlemen's Beef Association repudiated the whole study, calling it "misguided" and "unscientific" and, even more damning, that it was "based on European circumstances." It's those pesky foreigners again!

Mad Cow disease in cattle can infect humans beings who eat the diseased flesh of these crazy cows. The disease is unfortunately invisible to the human eye and insensible to the human nose or pallette. Which means that as a burger-muncher you have no way of knowing whether you are eating beef which will, in the fullness of time, kill you. After incubating in your body for up to ten years you suddenly develop a disease which is a variant of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease. This is a nervous-system disease which is invariably fatal. There is no treatment and no cure. In fact, people are already dying in America from this disease. Last year, for example, a little over 600 people died from the human variant of Mad Cow disease. But since eating bad meat is not the only way to get Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, we cannot say with any assurance that these deaths are signs of the widespread presence of Mad Cow disease in the American beef supply. The only way to tell what caused a case of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease is to do an autopsy on the victim. So what do the autopsies show? Whoops. Here again, we have been taking short-cuts. Fewer than 300 of the Creutzfeld-Jakob deaths last year were autopsied. (The good news is that none of the autopsied cases indicated that the deaths were caused from Mad Cow.)

If you want to worry even more, since the effects of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease are similar to those produced by neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's, there is even a serious possibility that some cases of Alzheimer's may be mis-diagnosed cases of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease-and the discouraging and dramatic rise in Alzheimer's cases in recent years might be a symptom of the already widespread effects of Mad Cow in humans. And here again, most Alzheimer's victims are never subjected to an autopsy after death so the underlying cause of their pathology is never revealed. There have been a handful of scientific studies of Alzheimer's victims and they have found the frightful result that somewhere between 1% and 13% of Alzheimer's cases are actually mis-diagnosed Creutzfeld-Jakob disease. If the prevalence of this error is only the lower 1% figure, this would translate into 40,000 hidden Creutzfeld-Jakob cases per year in the U.S. Perhaps Mad Cow disease has been killing Americans in large numbers for years already, and we just didn't know it.

Let's review the numbers here:

--Each year the U.S. slaughters about 40 million cows.

--Of these, about 195,000 are either already dead (they die in the feedlot and their carcasses are hauled to the processing plant where they are chopped-up and fed to people as part of the regular beef supply) or they are already so sick they cannot stand on their own four feet ("downer" cattle).

--Of this sick or dead group, last year the Department of Agriculture inspected 20,056 for Mad Cow disease.

--Of the larger group, last year the Department inspected zero (none, nada) for Mad Cow disease.

--In his 2005 Budget Proposal, President Bush wants the Department of Agriculture to expand its Mad Cow inspections from 20,000 to 27,000 cows per year.

--Each year, about 600 Americans are dying from diagnosed Creutzfeld-Jakob disease.

--Each year perhaps a minimum of 40,000 additional cases of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease are mis-diagnosed as Alzheimer's disease.

--The latency of Mad Cow in cattle can be up to five years, and in humans the latency of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease can be up to ten years. Thus, there may be an unknown population of already infected individuals waiting to make their appearance.

So, we do not know with confidence what all the facts are here-because we have chosen not to know, by virtue of our refusal to do the testing necessary to find out. It is possible that Americans are already dying from Mad Cow infections at the rate of about 300 per year-or maybe not. It is highly likely that tens of thousands of Alzheimer's patients are actually suffering from mis-diagnosed Creutzfeld-Jakob disease. It is possible (I would say highly likely) that tens of thousands of infected cattle are already in the American food supply. And while there have probably been thousands of cattle infected in the U.S. herd for a long time, we have not known about it because we have been eating the evidence. It is possible (I think inevitable) that the impact of this hidden disease vector will not fully explode upon the scene for some years yet (as the incubation period for Creutzfeld-Jakob disease blossoms among people already infected).

Or I may be wrong about all this. Maybe the cattle industry really is looking out for your safety and not its greed. Maybe the Department of Agriculture really is more concerned about protecting the safety of the food supply than upsetting the economy on the eve of an election. Maybe there is nothing to worry about. Maybe it's all just media hysterics. It's your life. You decide whether another Big Mac is worth the risk. Given everything else that we have seen surrounding this issue, just don't expect to see me standing in line beside you at McDonald's.

February 5, 2004