In light of the recent discovery of mad cow disease in Washington state, where a dairy cow tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the safety of America's food supply has come into question.
Meanwhile, individuals, like biology scholar-in-residence Susan Solarz, are concerned about the limitations of current food regulations on today's meat. However, on Dec. 30, Department of Agriculture Secretary Anne Veneman added additional safeguards to further prevent BSE from contaminating the meat supply.
Solarz wasn't surprised when she first heard about the Washington state mad cow incident. She has worked to raise the public consciousness of food safety and regulations as well as the regulatory, legislative and the food safety challenges of Mad Cow Disease.
"Consumers need to depend on more transparency in production of their food," Solarz said.
One of the ways to prevent mad cow disease from entering the food supply is to ban downed animals, which were the cause of the Washington case. This has been an issue Solarz has campaigned for in the past.
Solarz began her work as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, where she began taking photos of downed animals. She has, in fact, worked for the past three years to ban all downed animals used for human food. Her work includes working for the USDA as well as with Congressman Gary Ackermann (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) on the current legislation to ban the slaughter of all downed animals for human food, which gained renewed interest given the recent case of BSE. However, it didn't take an act of congress for Solarz's cause to be addressed.
In a press conference Dec. 30, Veneman announced, "Effective immediately, USDA will ban all downer cattle from the human food chain... but I will stress again that our food supply and the public health remain safe." In addition, cows being tested for BSE will be held until results come back negative. Nerve tissue of cows older than 30 months are also banned from the food supply because BSE appears more often in older cows.
"It took six sessions of Congress and one case of mad cow for the government to take [the downer animal bill] seriously," Solarz said. Colleague and friend Gene Bauston agrees with Solarz and has been campaigning for the ban against downed animals since 1986. Bauston is the president of Farm Sanctuary, an organization that operates farm animals sanctuaries and wages campaigns to stop the exploitation of animals raised for food.
"Americans are grossly uninformed about what goes on at farms and what ends up in the food supply," Bauston said.
Bauston said that the committees that oversee the issue of meat inspections tend to be made up of legislators who represent the big meat industries and who have opposed reforms and have impeded Congress from passing the dowed animal act and other similar laws.
"I've seen living animals on dead animals and on trash piles as well as comatose," Bauston said. "There still seems to be a desire to slaughter these animals for money, however."
The National Cattlemen's Beef Association was surprised by the first case of BSE in December, according to Karen Batra, director of public affairs for the association.
Despite this, many students are content to fulfill their desires for the satisfying taste of a hamburger by going to TDR, whose menu has not changed.
Freshman Christina Wright said she ate roast beef and turkey for Christmas even after she heard about the Mad Cow incident on Dec. 23 when she was home in Hatboro, Pa. She disregarded the news report because it had no bearing on her, since meat in her state was not recalled, Wright said.
"[Vegans, vegetarians and individuals who stopped eating beef] are missing out, but it's their personal choice," Wright said.
Wright is studying to be a chef on her own time and is concerned about the quality of food, yet trusts government food regulations.
"I don't think the government would do something wrong," Wright said. "I think it's a concern, but not a danger. Honestly, I don't think about it until the media reports on that product."
According to Jack Cahill, general manager of Bon Appetit, there have been no requests for changes in the menu. However, it is important to keep in mind that mad cow disease is associated with eating meat of the brain, spinal cord and nerve tissue, and those are animal parts that are not served, he said.
AU receives its beef from IBP Inc., one of the largest meat packers in the United States who merged with Tyson Foods in 2001. This merger created one company with the largest market share in beef and poultry and the second largest in pork. The company is currently involved in an anti-trust case brought on by six cattle producers.
"All our meat is [U.S. Department of Agriculture] choice grade and ... highly inspected from the major packinghouse," Cahill said.
While beef is integrated into the menu between lunch and dinner several times a week, poultry is the most popular food in the student population, Cahill said.
Cahill assured that Bon Appetit staff take precautions in the care of the meat from training the staff to keeping the fridges at appropriate temperatures.
Mad cow, a form of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSE), is a chronic degenerative disease caused by a mutated protein, called a prion, which affects the central nervous system of cows. It was first found in 1986 in the United Kingdom.
Other examples of TSEs include scrapie in sheep, kuru in cannibals from New Guinea and feline spongiform encephalopathy in cats. However, the cause of worry from BSE is that the human form of the disease, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), is linked to human consumption of BSE-contaminated meat. Symptoms include insomnia, depression, memory problems, as well as poor coordination and sight. Victims lose all mental and physical functions, which inevitably results in death. It has already been linked to 140 human deaths, mostly in Europe.
Preventing more U.S. cases of mad cow
In a poll conducted by the association, beef consumers are higher than ever, partially due to consumer confidence, the way that the USDA and the way the industry handled the situation and the news reports, Batra said.
"The public is loyal and continues to eat beef," Batra said. The USDA confirmed that consumer confidence and demand for beef was relatively strong, although a report published in 2002 reported that over the past 25 years beef consumption has decreased by 25%, while poultry consumption has more than doubled.
The association supports the heightened regulations immediately placed on the food supply on the already thorough processing system and plant inspection. However, they believe that the bill that Solarz and Bauston is working for is redundant of the USDA ban on downer cattle.
Meaty Concerns
Mad cow is not the only disease to worry about since there are other meat-related concerns that include E.Coli and salmonella that causes 5,000 deaths a year, Solarz said.
According to Solarz, 1,000 to 100,000 people in the United States will die from contaminated meat and while the number is at a minimum, it will most likely rise.
Solarz emphasizes that the USDA needs to ensure standards of inspection and regulation, expand the feed ban to include all mammalian products, Advanced Meat Recovery as well as increased animal testing and tracking.
While others can't escape the taste of beef, freshman Brittany Grow remains uneasy about meat in the country.
"I don't trust meat in America," Grow said, who became a vegan six months ago. "Not all the cleaning they do gets rid of germs and bacteria ... they put hormones and antibiotics that aren't healthy for us and they radiate meat, [and] we don't know what it does to us in the long run. All this scares me."
Eagle Staff Writer Kim Peterson contributed to this report.
Mad cow Facts
Mad cow may be present for four to seven years before symptoms appear. The only identifiable method is by actually dissecting the brain.
Only about 20,000 animals of the 35 million that were slaughtered in the United States in 2003 were tested for BSE by the Department of Agriculture. However, countries like Japan and Great Britain test all slaughtered animals.
The main defense against mad cow is the 1997 feed ban that prohibited protein or bone meal sheep. However, cow parts are still allowed in pig, poultry and horse feed. This week, the government is:
Source: CBSnews.com, CNN.com
