Growers and Grocers

I admit it; I’m suspicious of most anything the US government does. I’m not a fan of the current administration’s big business-loving policies, and I think that the system we have of a few powerful lawyers lobbying Congress on every issue you can think of is a bad thing for consumers. Recently, my conspiracy-theory suspicions were re-aroused when the Food and Drug administration announced that it was scaling back testing for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as Mad Cow Disease or B.S.E. Not scaling back a bit, but scaling back almost 90% of testing.

Testing is voluntary, and slaughterhouses and producers have big incentives to send samples for testing from cows that are not likely to turn up positive. Because BSE is such a high-profile disease, slaughterhouses that get positive results could be shut down, and the bad publicity surrounding a positive result would send tremors through the entire beef industry, which has powerful lobbyist connections in Washington.

Testing is expensive; until the cuts were made in the number of tests, it cost US taxpayers about a million dollars a week to pay for testing approximately 1,000 cows. 35 million cows are slaughtered annually for food consumption in the United States, making that 1000 a week figure about 1%. The new watered down testing will be for 100 cows a week. While I think it is a good thing to save taxpayer money, I don’t think that it is safe in this instance.

US exporters of beef have been the biggest losers in the whole mad cow debacle. Japan, South Korea, and more than 48 other countries have banned US beef imports, citing concerns over BSE. Japanese consumers demand that every slaughtered animal be tested; Americans should too. Companies are not allowed to perform their own tests; the USDA conducts all testing. Slaughterhouses are paid $100 for each sample they send in for testing, and the government argues that if universal testing were allowed, US consumers might think untested beef wasn’t safe. Wow, John and Jane Q. Public, isn’t that a ringing endorsement of what your government thinks of your intelligence level?

In a free market economy, consumers make decisions based on many different factors, but price is always a driving force. I would pay more for tested beef for the peace of mind that comes with knowing that I’m not going to contract the human form of BSE.

Just in case you need a primer on BSE, here’s the quick reference guide. BSE causes holes in the brain of cattle, which breaks down various systems until death follows. Humans who eat diseased tissue from cattle may develop the human form of BSE known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) or new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (nvCJD). Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in normal form usually occurs in older adults through a tendency of the brain to change spontaneously for no apparent reason. New variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob occurs in younger people and has slightly different symptoms; such as psychiatric episodes or sensory deprivation, and abnormalities in the nervous system. These abnormalities include ataxia (failure of muscle control) within weeks or months, dementia (loss of memory and confusion) and eventually result in death, although comfortingly, that doesn’t happen until years later.

The US has had one verifiable case of nvCJD, in a Florida man who was born and raised in England. There is no cure.

Suggestions for avoiding BSE are simple. Avoid eating the spinal cord or brains of infected cattle. Studies seem to imply that muscle meat (which is what ground beef, pot roasts, and steaks are made of) do not transmit the prions that cause nvCJD or vCJD. Or avoid beef all together, until testing standards are revised to protect against this disease.