United Press International 6/30/2004 7:26 PM

Up to 100 More Mad Cow Cases Expected
By Steve Mitchell

WASHINGTON, June 30 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported
Wednesday a cow that initially tested positive for mad cow disease has come
back negative on follow-up testing, but a food industry consultant told
United Press International he estimates there could be more than 100 cases
of the deadly disorder in the country's herds.

About half of the cases will go undetected and passed on for human
consumption, Robert LaBudde, president of Least Cost Formulation Ltd., a
food industry consultancy in Virginia Beach, Va., told UPI.

The USDA is still awaiting results from another case that initially tested
positive Tuesday. Results could take four to seven days. Under the agency's
expanded surveillance plan, which went into effect June 1, cows initially
are screened by so-called rapid tests and any positives are followed up with
confirmatory testing. The only confirmed U.S. case of mad cow disease to
date occurred in Washington state last December.

The concern is humans can contract a fatal, incurable brain illness known as
variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease from eating meat infected with the mad cow
pathogen. The USDA said any cows that initially test positive are withheld
from the food supply pending additional testing, so U.S. beef is safe.

"No matter how the confirmatory test comes back, USDA remains confident in
the safety of the U.S. beef supply," USDA's chief veterinary officer John
Clifford told reporters Wednesday.

LaBudde, who has served on the faculties of the University of
Wisconsin-Madison and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thinks
there will be many more infected cows detected.

"There is no question that we will be seeing a dozen or more -- possibly 100
or more -- cases of BSE-positive cattle in our national herd," said LaBudde,
whose clients include the meat industry.

Mad cow disease is also known by the technical name bovine spongiform
encephalopathy or BSE.

LaBudde said he bases his prediction on the one positive case detected so
far, compared to the number of downers, or at-risk animals, in U.S. herds --
which amounts to about 250,000 by his calculations. That would yield about
68 cases among the at-risk cows, he wrote in a recent article published in
Food Safety magazine. In Europe, the number of cases among seemingly healthy
animals has been about half that seen in the at-risk cows. So in the U.S.
that would yield 34 additional cases, for a total of 102.

Only about half the cases will be detected, however, because many animals
will not show any symptoms, LaBudde said. This is based on the experience in
Europe, where half the animals that test positive have no outward symptoms
of infection, he added.

The USDA's surveillance plan focuses predominantly on animals with obvious
signs of the disease, such as staggering, the inability to stand or dying
from it. Only a small percentage of healthy-appearing animals will be
tested.

LaBudde said the department should test all cows over age 5 regardless of
their health status, because these are the most likely to have passed
through the lengthy incubation period of the disease and test positive. He
called the USDA's failure to do that bordering on "negligent."

The USDA and the meat industry have insisted the U.S. beef supply is safe
because the most infectious parts of the cows -- the brain, spinal cord and
intestines -- are being removed.

LaBudde agrees with that assessment, estimating there would be, at most,
only one case of vCJD in the United States.

"But that doesn't mean that the policy is not malfeasance and morally
wrong," he said. "It's much like a car company taking the 'insurable risk'
and letting the gas tanks explode under certain types of rear-end
collisions."

Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and other USDA officials have said they
expect to find additional mad cow cases, but agency spokeswoman Julie Quick
said the agency does not have an official estimate of the total number of
cases they eventually expect to detect.

"That is one of the reasons we put this enhanced surveillance plan in
place," Quick told UPI.

David Ray, spokesman for the American Meat Institute, a trade group in
Arlington, Va., told UPI his organization also does not have an estimate of
the number of infected cows that might be lurking in U.S. herds.

"We've never even tried to make an estimate," Ray said.

The number of cases is irrelevant to food safety, he said, because the
agency's testing program is designed to help determine the prevalence of the
disease, not ensure the safety of the meat supply. The safety of the food is
ensured by the removal of the most infectious parts of the animal, he said.

Spinal columns are often split open during processing, however, and some
experts have expressed concern this creates the potential for the infectious
agent to contaminate the meat.
--
Steve Mitchell is UPI's Medical Correspondent. E-mail

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=...0-042354-9787r

_.-In rec.food.cooking, Sam D. wrote the following -._
> The USDA and the meat industry have insisted the U.S. beef supply is safe
> because the most infectious parts of the cows -- the brain, spinal cord and
> intestines -- are being removed.

And that is the part that never makes it on the TV news. If more
people knew that you could eat a steak from a mad cow and not worry
because the meat has no tracess of the problem.
Thus.. I don't panic. And I say this as someone who has read The
Jungle.

--
.-')) http://asciipr0n.com/fp ('-. | It's a damn poor mind that
' ..- .:" ) ( ":. -.. ' | can only think of one way to
((,,_;'.;' UIN=66618055 ';. ';_,,)) | spell a word.
((_.YIM=Faux_Pseudo :._)) | - Andrew Jackson

In article <8PXEc.17$pY2.15@lakeread01>,
Faux_Pseudo > wrote:

> _.-In rec.food.cooking, Sam D. wrote the following -._
> > The USDA and the meat industry have insisted the U.S. beef supply is safe
> > because the most infectious parts of the cows -- the brain, spinal cord and
> > intestines -- are being removed.
>
> And that is the part that never makes it on the TV news. If more
> people knew that you could eat a steak from a mad cow and not worry
> because the meat has no tracess of the problem.
> Thus.. I don't panic. And I say this as someone who has read The
> Jungle.

<shiver> I've read that book too.....
Almost put me off commercial sausage forever!

K.

--
Sprout the Mung Bean to reply...

>,,<Cat's Haven Hobby Farm>,,<Katraatcenturyteldotnet>,,<

http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...user id=katra

One dark day on Usenet, Katra > said:
> In article <8PXEc.17$pY2.15@lakeread01>,
> Faux_Pseudo > wrote:

> > _.-In rec.food.cooking, Sam D. wrote the following -._
> > > The USDA and the meat industry have insisted the U.S. beef supply is safe
> > > because the most infectious parts of the cows -- the brain, spinal cord
> > >and intestines -- are being removed.
> >
> > And that is the part that never makes it on the TV news. If more
> > people knew that you could eat a steak from a mad cow and not worry
> > because the meat has no tracess of the problem.
> > Thus.. I don't panic. And I say this as someone who has read The
> > Jungle.
>
> <shiver> I've read that book too.....
> Almost put me off commercial sausage forever!

I wonder how many folks leading veggie lifestyles did so after reading
"The Jungle". ;-)

j.j. - who liked the book, but avoided processed meats for a while...

_.-In rec.food.cooking, Steve Wertz wrote the following -._
> They cut the spinal cord down the center with a saw that splashes
> pieces of spinal cord tissue all over the rest of the cow.

Which is normally sprayed down to remove it because people don't like
bitting into bits of spinal cord pepering their stake. Not completely
effective but enough for me.

> Also, a T-bone or bone-in strip steak is part of the spinal cord,

Those aren't cuts I normally eat. Can't afford them.

> plus there's nerves from the spinal cord running all throughout the
> cow.

I haven't seen any evidance that BSE is in those nevers though.

> You're apparently not as well read as you think you are.

Better than most. Not as good as some.

> Over 30% of the meat in the latest USDA survey of mechanically
> separated meat included spinal cord tissue.

Mecanically sperated meat isn't something I eat too often unless it is
pig meat. I eat lots of pork sausage but seldom touch any processed
meat of the cow kind.

Now if dogs and cats started dropping from mad cow I would be worried
because they tend to get all of the parts of the cow that "didn't
enter the human food chain". When they start stumbling around then I
will chang my diet.

--
.-')) http://asciipr0n.com/fp ('-. | It's a damn poor mind that
' ..- .:" ) ( ":. -.. ' | can only think of one way to
((,,_;'.;' UIN=66618055 ';. ';_,,)) | spell a word.
((_.YIM=Faux_Pseudo :._)) | - Andrew Jackson