Conscious Choice: Cannibal Cows May Threaten U.S. Food Supply!

May 1996

Cannibal Cows May Threaten U.S. Food Supply!

by Ben Lilliston

By now most Americans are aware of the frightening events in Great Britain, where scientists have found a probable link between an incurable brain disease in humans and the consumption of British beef from cows afflicted with Mad Cow disease. The American mainstream media has been quick to soothe fears of a similar health crisis involving U.S. beef. But in truth, many of the same conditions which spawned the horrific events in Britain also exist here, and there may already be a hidden Mad Cow-related crisis in the U.S.

The Mad Cow story broke in March, when doctors from the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that ten cases of Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (CJD) in Britain were connected to the consumption of beef with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or Mad Cow disease. These ten cases represent a unique strain of CJD, which attacks the human brain in a fashion similar to the affliction of cattle with BSE. As a result, WHO scientists think that spongiform encephalopathy may have jumped the species barrier to humans.

CJD is a particularly horrible disease in which particles known as protein prions eat away at the brain’s nerve cells, leaving it riddled with holes. The symptoms include dementia, a progressive loss of intelligence and memory, a loss of coordination, and sometimes paralysis and blindness. It unfailingly ends in death. CJD has an approximate ten-year latency period, which is why cases are appearing in Britain now. The incidence of CJD is small in Britain, but has more than doubled from 27 cases in 1990 to 55 cases in 1994. Some British scientists have speculated that this is the first wave of new CJD victims.

The CJD strain discovered in Great Britain has had several unique traits. It is striking a much younger population than traditional CJD. The average age for diagnosis of CJD was 65, but of these ten victims studied by WHO, the average age was 26—including four teenagers. Additionally, traditional CJD symptoms are very similar to Alzheimer’s, while the new strain includes the staggering and loss of balance seen in BSE-riddled cattle. Finally, autopsies show that the new strain is attacking a different section of the brain than traditional CJD. Germany has recently identified two cases similar to the British strain of CJD.

Investigators suspect that British cattle contracted BSE from animal feed cake that included protein supplements made up of parts of cow and sheep. British sheep also have been afflicted with a strain of spongiform encephalopathy known as scrapie. BSE appears to form naturally in a small percentage of cows, but scientists suspect that feeding diseased sheep and cows to other cows is what has caused the unusually widespread incidence of Mad Cow disease among British herds. Cows, which are natural vegetarians, are not equipped to digest meat in any case, so feeding diseased cows to other cows seems particularly, well, demented. Britain banned this practice of cow cannibalism in 1989, and has been successful in reducing new incidences of BSE. However, damage from BSE is still coming to light.

There are no known cases of BSE in the U.S., and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports no increases in CJD—which continues to strike one person in one million. The U.S. banned British beef in 1989, so there’s nothing to worry about right?

Unfortunately, the threat of BSE in America is very real, primarily because the U.S. cattle industry continues the barbaric practice of feeding cow and other rendered animals to livestock. According to the Pure Food Campaign, an estimated 14 percent of all U.S. cattle, by weight, are fed back to other cattle in the form of protein feed supplements.

In a statistic that may be related, scrapie has been detected in sheep in 39 states. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended in April that the feed industry voluntarily ban the use of sheep and cows in cattle feed, and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) has said that it will invoke a voluntary ban on the practice. Yet the food rendering and feed industries have been noticeably silent about BSE.

"This voluntary ban is meaningless," says John Stauber, of PR Watch, who has monitored the BSE issue in the U.S. "It doesn’t matter what some lobby group [like NCBA] in Washington says. A voluntary ban did not work in Britain. Until this practice becomes illegal, it will continue."

Consumer groups and some scientists have been calling on the FDA to ban the feeding of ruminants to ruminants since the early 1990s. In the last several weeks, the Foundation on Economic Trends and the International Center for Technology Assessment have filed legal actions with the FDA to force the agency to invoke a legal ban on the process.

"Some animal and human health problems are so devastating in their effect that the margin of safety to avoid them should be as wide as possible," says Roger Wyse, Dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Science at the University of Wisconsin.

But not only has the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and FDA failed to invoke a ban on ruminant to ruminant feeding, the government has chosen to ignore significant warnings that a different strain of BSE may already be active in the U.S., and may be affecting humans.

In 1985, a variation of spongiform encephalopathy called TME wiped out a population of minks in Wisconsin. Their diet consisted almost exclusively of dairy cattle called "downers," a term that describes cows which become too sick to get up. University of Wisconsin veterinary scientist Richard Marsh decided to inoculate U.S. cattle with the infected mink brains. These cows subsequently died. Marsh then inoculated U.S. cattle with scrapie-infected sheep brain, and watched the cows die after experiencing the symptoms of downer cows. According to the Pure Food Campaign, there is currently an epidemic of "downer" cows in the U.S., striking approximately 20,000 to 30,000 cattle in Wisconsin alone every year.

"Seeing the trouble in Great Britain, I realize the problem we could have down the road here," says Dr. Marsh, who has been calling for a ban on feeding rendered ruminant byproducts to cattle. Given the possibility of a unique strain of BSE in the U.S. cattle, is it possible that humans may be acquiring a different form of Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease?

While CJD rates have remained relatively steady in the U.S., rates for similar diseases such as Alzheimer’s have not. Currently, there are an estimated 4 million cases of Alzheimer’s in the U.S. According to Stauber, doctors do not perform regular autopsies on dementia patients because of the risks of handling a brain that may have been attacked by CJD. But a preliminary 1989 study at the University of Pennsylvania found that more than five percent of patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s are actually dying from human spongiform encephalopathy. "It’s an indication that we may already have an epidemic in the U.S.," says Ronnie Cummins, director of the Pure Food Campaign.

Unlike Britain, we have no CJD registry in the U.S. According to internal federal documents obtained by Stauber through the Freedom of Information Act, the USDA, FDA and CDC, made a conscious decision in 1991, not to set up a CJD registry, in order to avoid panicking the public. USDA official Will Hueston continues to call the Mad Cow threat in the U.S. a "hypothetical disease." In response to recent events, the CDC announced that it would begin tracking CJD cases in Minnesota, California, Connecticut, and Oregon.

"The media reporting of this has been atrocious because the issue has been very carefully managed by the USDA, FDA, and CDC with the ultimate goal of reassuring consumers that beef is safe," Stauber said. It really is no surprise that the U.S. government and the mainstream media have tried to downplay possible risks to human health from BSE. Food rendering is a $1.7 billion industry, animal feed is a $20 billion industry, and beef is a $60 billion industry. When stacked against the health of giant agribusiness, the consumer risks take a back seat.

Also caught in the middle of all this are farmers, notably in Britain, where many have lost their livelihood because of the beef scare. "Both in Britain and in the U.S., farmers have been unclear about what they were feeding their cattle," says Cummins. "It doesn’t say‘dead and diseased cows and goats’ on the feed label."

With ten deaths in England linked to beef consumption, American consumers must now consider the risks in eating beef themselves. For the concerned carnivore, organic beef is probably the safest option available.

For more information: Send a self-addressed stamped envelope to the Pure Food Campaign, 860 Highway 61, Little Marais, MN 55614. Or call the Eating With a Conscience Campaign at 301-258-3054.

Illustration by John Beske

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