BERLIN -- Europe's ongoing panic over mad cow disease shows no signs of easing up, which raises the question: Could this happen in the United States?
So far, there have been no reported instances of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the United States, and strict measures are in place to make sure that remains the case. Whether other related ailments -- that is, other diseases grouped under the heading transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) -- could pose a risk remains open to interpretation.
Lester Crawford, administrator of the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service until 1991, urges calm. Mad-cow disease, or BSE, can be kept from harming American beef, even though the epidemic in Europe makes that harder, he said.
"The new developments in Europe, with one country after another reporting what we call endemic BSE, raises the stakes for the United States considerably," he said. "In effect, we not only have to ban all imports from Europe, in my opinion, we also have to watch trans-shipment, meaning animals that are transported via another country. Our task just got immensely more difficult."
Crawford, now director of the Center for Food and Nutrition Policy at Georgetown University, noted that the U.S. government had taken an aggressive approach to keep out British cattle since 1988, and a still more agressive approach when the discovery was made in 1996 that BSE could spread to humans. He said the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) gets high marks for its clean record on BSE so far.
"They are very effective," he said. "They are very well funded. I think we are doing about all that can humanly be done. It would be correct to say that the U.S. government has taken it very seriously since they first learned what it was in 1988. It's APHIS' sworn testimony before Congress that they can keep it out. I don't know whether it's inevitable or not. I think we can succeed."
John Stauber thinks Americans have a lot to worry about. He is co-author, with Sheldon Rampton, of the November 1997 volume Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here? available via Common Courage Press -- or from this website.
"People in the United States should be more than worried," Stauber said. "They should be very angry that the U.S. government is covering up the risks of mad deer and mad elk disease to hunters and to those who eat venison products. And also that our regulations in the U.S., with regard to feeding slaughterhouse waste to animals, are inadequate.
"The U.S. has built this huge wall against British mad cow disease, but has done little or nothing to address our own indigenous TSEs. In my opinion, that's because U.S. policy has been driven by the desire to protect the image of U.S. beef. So the focus is on one disease, called mad cow disease, and ignoring other diseases like scrapie."
If the example of Germany is any indication, Americans should pay attention. Public officials in Germany had considered themselves invulnerable to BSE, even after the brain-wasting disease showed up in livestock in Britain, France, Ireland, Portugal, Switzerland and Spain.
In 1996, European concern over BSE skyrocketed when British scientists traced a link between the animal malady and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a human form of the condition that has claimed 80 lives in Britain and two in France.
Germany's first confirmed case of BSE came just last month, setting off a full-scale PANIK -- as the tabloids blared -- and endless rounds of self-criticism from public officials who said they had been arrogant in thinking it couldn't happen here. A fresh case of BSE was confirmed Sunday in the southern state of Bavaria, prompting a whole new round of jitters.
Bavaria accounts for nearly one-third of all beef production in Germany, according to figures from the Bavarian Statistics Office. Bavarian Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber released a statement describing the BSE case as a "severe blow for our farm industry."
Sales of beef have fallen off dramatically around Germany, and people are rushing to buy horse meat instead. The Telegraph of London reported an 80 percent increase in German sales of horse meat, some of which has been used along with pork to make sausage.
"Everyone is buying it," a horse-meat butcher from southwest Germany told the paper. "Old people, young mothers, young couples, single people. People from all walks of life. They think it is safer and it tastes good, like Argentine beef."
Just Wednesday, Bavaria reported another confirmed case of BSE -- this time in an animal from the Oberpfalz district born in 1996. France, meanwhile, reported that its total number of BSE cases for the year had risen by another two to 141.
"The major mistake that countries make is to assume that it's a British problem, and to assume that this disease is like other diseases, when in fact this disease is like no other disease in so many ways," Stauber said.
"It's caused apparently by an infectious protein, not by a virus or bacteria. We don't know how bad the situation is going to get in the UK and the EU countries because we've never seen an epidemic on this scale before."
More confirmed instances of BSE are expected in Germany. The government responded to last month's bad news by instituting mandatory quick-testing on cattle that had reached the age of 30 months or older. The pharmaceuticals group Boehringer Ingelheim has been working on a type of quick-testing that could detect BSE in animals that are still alive -- a potentially major breakthrough, especially in terms of quelling public outrage and worry.
"I've been frankly surprised that this hasn't occurred a little sooner in Europe," Stauber said. "Back in 1988, when Britain realized that mad cow disease was being spread among cattle by contaminated feed, they began banning the use of rendered byproducts ... in Britain but exporting the contaminated feed abroad, especially to France, from which it moved to most European countries.
"So it was just a matter of time. It was clear when we wrote our book ... that there were cases of BSE throughout Europe that were being covered up. There had to be. All that contaminated feed going to Europe had to result in some cases. I think it's simply taken until this past year for the European BSE problem to come to light."
Animal remains ending up in feed given to other animals forms the brunt of Stauber's complaint with U.S. policy.
"What the meat industry has done in Europe and the United States is taken slaughterhouse waste and turned it into feed, and when I say slaughterhouse waste I mean gristle, bones, guts -- everything that's unfit for human consumption."
This practice may soon come to an end -- as it already has in the case of feed given to U.S. cattle. The U.S. government banned the inclusion of meat and bone meal from feed that is given to cattle, since it could contain prion, which causes BSE.
Stauber worries about other forms of BSE showing up in other animals. He cites the cases of two young hunters who died in recent years from Creutzfeld-Jakob disease. Stauber thinks they died because of exposure to deer that suffered from a form of BSE. But so far, most people think of this as a problem with beef, not with venison or other animal meat.
Stauber may have a point when he argues that the U.S. approach has been in part to talk up U.S. beef internationally as BSE-free, so it can increase its position as the world's largest beef-exporter. Then again, that approach is not without risk. Even one or two instances of BSE in the United States could set off a panic in a hurry.
Michael Doyle, regents professor of food microbiology at the University of Georgia, said he's confident that won't happen.
"If there is an isolated incident, the key is we need to be able to control it and make it a small incident, rather than having a situation where large numbers of herds are affected," he said. "I think our USDA has been very stringent in monitoring imports of live animals, and controlling what's offered as processed meat."
And does he himself eat beef?
"I'm a beef eater, oh yes," he said. "But I eat ground beef well cooked -- because of e. coli, not BSE. I'll eat steaks medium rare and have no concerns about BSE."
