Editorial: Criticism of mad cow rules

Saturday, Jan. 7, 2006 | 7:42 a.m.

Scientific researchers and the nation's top hamburger proprietor have said the federal government is not doing enough to protect U.S. cattle and, consequently, beef consumers from mad cow disease.

According to the Associated Press, comments submitted to the Food and Drug Administration say stricter measures are needed to prevent infected meat from getting into the food supply for cattle, which are then consumed by people. The FDA has proposed new guidelines for safe feeding of cattle that fall "woefully short" of what is needed, according to critics that include seven scientists and McDonald's Corp.

Eating meat or cattle products contaminated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, so-called mad cow disease, has been linked to a rare and fatal nerve disorder in humans. No known cases of the human disease have been contracted in the United States, the Associated Press reports. Two cases of mad cow disease have been reported among U.S. cattle. The government has tested more than half a million of the nation's 95 million cattle since the first case was reported in 2003.

The primary defense against the disease is prohibiting the use of cattle remains in cattle feed, a ban that has been in effect in the United States since 1997. But that ban still allows restaurant plate waste, poultry litter and blood to be used in food -- loopholes that allow potential mad cow infection, critics say.

The FDA in October unveiled revisions to tighten the guidelines, but it would allow tissue from dead animals to be used in cattle feed if the brains and spinal cords -- the primary tissues in which the disease is carried -- are removed.

But critics note that the infection has been found to have traveled beyond these tissues in animals that died of mad cow disease. They say tissues beyond the brain and spinal cord should be removed from meat to be eaten by people, and that all dead cattle tissue and poultry blood and litter should be banned from animal feed.

The American Meat Institute, which backs food processors, supports the FDA proposal and says removing only brain and spinal tissue would prevent about 90 percent of the potential infection threat.

But the critics are right to question the efficacy of measures that seek anything less than 100 percent prevention. The federal government should enact the strictest measures possible to ensure the safety of the food we eat.