Mad cow probe offers little reassurance

Investigation illustrates need for better testing

	Cattle feed at a farm Dec. 28 in Sunnyside, Wash., where animals were quarantined after USDA officials determined cows from the farm may have been infected with mad cow disease.
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images file

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COMMENTARY

By Arthur Caplan, Ph.D.

msnbc.com contributor

updated 8:40 p.m. ET Feb. 11, 2004

The Bush administration announced earlier this week that it was calling off the search for cattle that might have mad cow disease. Is this really a good idea? Probably. But is the government doing enough to insure that mad cow does not imperil the lives of Americans and at the same time destroy a crucial part of our economy? Hardly.

The hunt for animals that might be infected with mad cow began seven weeks ago when the first case of mad cow in the United States was discovered at a dairy farm in Washington state. Soon after, investigators from the U.S. Department of Agriculture set out to determine whether there were any other infected cows.

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During the investigation, officials found that the Washington cow was one of at least 80 other possibly infected cows that had entered this country from the Canadian province of Alberta. But finding these animals proved to be as difficult an assignment as searching for a competent singer on American Idol.

In their hunt for the animals, the investigators visited scores of farms in three states and sifted through the records of roughly 75,000 cows. No wonder the USDA, after finding just 29 of the suspect cows, cashed in its chips. The paper trails on cows born more than three years ago in other countries are non-existent, and the ear tags that are put on cows' ears to help identify them don’t stay on for all that long.

The USDA's wild-goose chase makes it clear that trying to track down herds that might be infected with mad cow disease after the fact is never going to work. The systems are just not in place to facilitate such an extensive search. But if adequate tracking systems are not going to be set up, the government must instead institute a tough policy to test cattle for mad cow.

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Each year there are about 35 million cows slaughtered in the United States. Last year only 20,000 cattle were randomly tested for mad cow, while this year the government expects to test 40,000.

This situation is nuts. All it would take is one death attributed to an infected cow that ended up in a cheeseburger to bring the entire U.S. economy to a halt. If anyone doubts this assessment, they need only look at what happened to the British beef industry in the years after the outbreak there.

If it is hard to look back to pinpoint the source of an infection, then it is prudent to look forward and aggressively screen for mad cow disease. Screening less than one in every 20,000 animals that you and I eat is not nearly enough.

Arthur Caplan is director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.