Apologies to Stauber & Rampton for stealing their title, but how can you say anything else?
So, Mad Cow is here, or at least we're finally admitting that it's here. Of course, as was predictable, the USDA is saying there's nothing to worry about. And George Gray, America's "foremost expert", says there's nothing to worry about.
Of course, he said it wouldn't happen here, but if it did, it could never enter the food chain, which it appears to have done already. Whaddya bet George's research is funded by the meat industry?
It's been obvious to anybody who reads the stories and keeps up with the news that not only was our surveillance program absolutely inadequate, but that the USDA and it's associated meat industries were determined to follow the British government's example and simply deny that there was any possible problem instead of implementing a reasonable testing and prevention protocol.
You'll notice a recurring theme in the official communications: that it's illegal in the US to feed ruminants to ruminants. There is certainly a rule in place (for which compliance is essentially voluntarily, since our inspection program is completely inadequate) which bans direct feed, but it remains legal to buy ruminant MBM (Meat & Bone Meal) for chicken feed. Obviously that MBM could be fed directly to runimants (in violation of the rule), but it's also perfectly legal to feed poultry derived feed (ground and dried chickens, essentially) to cows, completing the ruminant to ruminant feeding cycle. Thanks, USDA, for your thorough and undying concern for the health of US...meat companies.
You'll notice another recurring theme: there is no real danger to the public. Well, if that's the case, why did we ban Canadian beef for six months when a similar "isolated" case of BSE was found in Alberta? Could it be that the US government wanted to boost US meat exports? How is it that there's enough danger to ban Canadian beef but there's no danger when it's US beef?
BSE has always been a threat, and the USDA's response has always been inadequate. Testing 12,000 (or even 24,000) cows a year out of the 130,000 downer cows that enter the human food chain was ridiculous. Testing based on British cattle symptoms instead of American cattle symptoms (established by laboratory studies as different) was stupid. If there was any controversy about symptoms we should simply have tested every cow. Yes, it would have started out expensive, but cheap fast reliable tests would have been developed rapidly once there was a market for them.
Oh, and let us not forget that CJD is far more prevalent than the 1 in 1,000,000 usually quoted. Various studies show various results, but conservatively .5% at least of fatal Alzheimer's cases are actually CJD or vCJD when confirmed by autopsy (out of 4 million Americans with Alzheimer's).
Don't worry about this blowing over. Next year we get the sequel: TSE IV: The Deer....