Beef eaters don’t need to get mad

One single cow has turned my world as a beef management
specialist at the University of California, Davis, upside
down. 

Born in Canada where it was probably exposed to the infectious
agent as a young animal, the cow tested positive in Washington
state for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad cow
disease. Questions on how this occurred and what should be done
about it are consuming much of my time now.

It’s one of those issues the government wants to control
so as not to alarm unduly the public. The public demands to know
whether it should be concerned about the safety of the beef it
consumes. The beef industry wants to ensure everything is being
done so that there is no chance of BSE occurring in the United
States.

I am reminded of what one of my professors said when I began
graduate school. “Half of what we teach you is wrong,”
he said. “The problem is that we don’t know which
half.” So, in dealing with this issue, there is room for
error.

In the mid-1990s, a link between BSE and a new human
encephalopathy variant called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease was
observed in Great Britain and confirmed by scientists at UC San
Francisco. BSE was at epidemic proportions in the British cattle
herd and epidemiological predictions of thousands of human cases of
Creutzfeldt-Jakob in the United Kingdom were made. Fortunately,
those predictions were wrong ““ there have been fewer than 200
confirmed human cases.

In the United States, safeguards have been in place since the
late 1980s to prevent the occurrence of BSE. These safeguards
include the prohibition of importing live cattle and most ruminant
products from the United Kingdom and other high-risk countries. A
ruminant feed ban also was added in 1997. A Harvard risk assessment
study in November 2001 showed little chance of BSE occurring in
North America, but now there have been two cases ““ one May 20
in Canada and the recent case Dec. 23 in Washington. Of course,
these figures still are miniscule compared to the hundreds of
thousands of cases in Europe.

Will there be more cases in North America? Probably. Does
that make beef less safe? Maybe. Should we be
concerned? Definitely. But how concerned? That is
the question.

I acutely am aware of the reactions of many California
ranchers. First and foremost, they want the USDA to do
whatever it takes to ensure BSE stays out of the country, and they
understand they may have to change some practices to assist that
effort. Some type of animal identification system is a likely
outcome for the beef industry, and it seems ready for such
measures. The USDA recently has added a number of other beef
processing practices that will further ensure safety including
banning the human consumption of non-ambulatory cattle (downers)
and other suspect cattle until they test negative for BSE. It also
has placed additional restrictions on specified risk materials
““ such as central nervous system tissue ““ from entering
the food supply, and it has implemented a verifiable system of
national animal identification.

The identification plan has been in the works for the past 18
months. The details of whether it will be a unique identifier for
every animal or just for every ranch are being discussed. In
addition, the United States maintains an aggressive surveillance
system by targeting high-risk animals at a rate exceeding
international standards. This system allowed for the discovery of
the two North American cases ““ both animals were born before
the ruminant feed ban in 1997 and thus possibly fed
“legal” meat and bone meal.

But what consumer precautions make sense? To me, it is
reassuring to live in a country at a time when all the verifiable
information regarding the issue is made public and we are given the
chance to evaluate its impact on us ““ unlike the mishandling
of the BSE and Creutzfeldt-Jakob outbreaks in Great Britain several
years ago. International scientists agree that the risk to
human health from eating muscle meat is negligible as infectious
material is found primarily in central nervous system tissue.

Consumers can be assured that the beef industry and the USDA
remain committed to protecting our food supply and our health. I am
confident the American consumer, when given the whole truth, will
react appropriately.

Oltjen is an animal management systems specialist at UC
Davis.