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Are the cows mad, or are we?ASK THIS | March 80, 2006How is it possible that just as mad cow disease appears to be becoming more prevalent in the United State, the USDA is scaling back its mad cow testing program? By Sam Kean Q. Why is the USDA scaling back mad cow testing just as the disease appears to be becoming more prevalent? Q. How effective was the program, anyway? What was its goal? Q. What kind of testing should be done? Q. What kind of testing do other countries do? Another United-States-bred feeder cow has tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), known colloquially as mad cow disease. The cow was first identified in Alabama on February 27, and results were confirmed by the USDA and its National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) in Ames, Iowa, on March 15. The lab discovered this infected cow, the third since 2002, as part of the USDA’s “enhanced surveillance program,” a planned 12-18 month investigation to determine the prevalence of BSE in the U.S. cattle population. The program began in June 2004 and has tested more than 650,000 high-risk cattle, discovering two confirmed cases of mad cow disease. There were also four inconclusive tests. A confirmed December 2003 case pre-dated the testing program. The USDA’s announcement that it plans to end its testing program, in spite of what the testing program found, has inflamed consumer-safety groups. But from the USDA’s perspective, those groups are confusing disease testing and disease prevention Consumer groups view testing as essential to ensure safety. But the USDA intended the current program as a statistical sampling to establish baseline numbers about the prevalence of BSE and it argues that disease-prevention methods are more effective. Indeed, the testing program wasn’t all that to start with. Only a tiny fraction of the tens of millions of cows slaughtered annually were tested. And the sampling methods the USDA used were called into question by the department’s own Office of Inspector General. A report released in February detailed a history of concerns with the statistical methods used to detect BSE. Summarizing its concerns, the report stated: “The U.S. program is voluntary and sampling is not random. The success of the program depends on the cooperation of industry and a variety of other conditions [. . . ]. Therefore, compared to the Europeans, USDA exerts less control over which animals can be tested for BSE, and is generally less able to assure that those tested represent the herd.” The report also indicated that it was unclear whether all geographic locations in the U.S. had been represented in the sample. In addition, the report cited examples where the chemical tests used to detect BSE were insufficient compared to other countries, particularly the United Kingdom and Japan. In some cases, due to additional screening, inconclusive tests in the U.S. were determined as positive tests in the U.K. In the wake of the third positive test, Consumers Union called for the USDA to both tighten animal feed rules and require all cattle over twenty months of age at slaughter to be tested.
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