US almost has a cow
David Usborne
November 21 2004 at 03:37PM
New York - Consumer groups and the beef industry in the United States are mobilising to avert any public panic over the nation's food supply after officials at the department of agriculture revealed they had uncovered a possible case of mad cow disease.
The government admitted that preliminary screening for the neurological ailment, which can be transmitted in a different and usually fatal form to humans, had proved positive on the animal. They insisted, however, that the results were considered "inconclusive" until further tests were completed.
Those results may be several more days in coming and meanwhile the country's $40-billion-a-year beef industry can only wait anxiously. The news sent beef prices tumbling and also cast an instant chill on the share prices of the main fast-food chains like McDonalds and Wendy's.
While some experts warned it was likely that the second round of tests would confirm the presence of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), officials at the Agricultural Department were more sanguine. They declined to reveal where the animal had been found or its breed.
"The inconclusive result does not mean we have found another case of BSE in this country," said Andrea Morgan, associate deputy administrator of the department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, adding that her agency "remains confident in the safety of the US beef supply."
A similar scare arose in July when the department said it had registered similar "inconclusive" findings on two animals and they both turned out to be free of BSE.
"We can't assume at this point that this 'inconclusive' represents a positive case," insisted Jan Lyons, president of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. She said the first rest was "simply the first step in the process".
The stakes for the industry are extremely high. It was rocked one year ago when the US found its first confirmed case of mad cow in a Holstein dairy cow in Washington State. Though further investigation found the animal had been imported from Canada, the discovery prompted scores of countries, including Japan and Taiwan, to ban imports of American beef. Those bans have only recently been lifted.
Exports account for about $3,8-billion every year for America's cattlemen.
Even more disastrous than a loss of international trade, however, would be a turn against beef by American consumers themselves. Last December, that was largely avoided as fans of steaks and burgers took the BSE discovery in their stride.
A second case could change all that, however.
Scientists have demonstrated that humans exposed to BSE-infected meat can contract variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which often leads to death. - Independent Foreign Service