6 May 1996 http://www.linkny.com/~civitas/page317.html
Peter Hall showed the first
signs of depression around Christmas, 1994. In five months he was in a
wheelchair. He died at age 20 of Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, a relentlessly
progressive and invariably fatal dementia [95] which usually attacks people in
their sixties[ 33]; cases under 30 are exceedingly rare [112]. Around the next
Christmas, an uproar ensued when leading British neuropathologist Sir Bernard
Tomlinson refused to feed his children burgers out of fear that they might
contract this disease from infected beef[102]. His fears were realized on
Wednesday, March 20, 1996, when the British government announced that the most
likely explanation of Peter's death and 9 other recently diagnosed cases of
Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease among English young people [41] was exposure to bovine
spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) [71].
'Very unhappy' were the words British vet Colin Whitaker used to describe the
dairy [12] cow who became the world's first documented case of BSE on a fine
spring morning in 1985[123]. Dubbed Mad Cow Disease by the British press[53],
BSE has by now a decade later stricken over 150,000 cattle [106]. The fear now
is that through the consumption of infected beef Britain may be on the brink of
the largest public health calamity since the Black Death[121] with worst case
scenario estimates involving the deaths of millions of people[101].
Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD) is a human spongiform encephalopathy[70] whose
standard clinical picture involves weekly deterioration[67] into blindness and
epilepsy[59] while one's brain perforates like swiss-cheese[105]. The World
Health Organization recently agreed with the British government's conclusion
that there is a new variant of CJD whose appearance is best explained by the BSE
epidemic in cows because of a number of consistent unusual features.[136]. Other
than being extraordinarily young[ 41], the human victims also had atypical
EEGs[96] and took twice as long to die[33]. The real clincher came, though, when
their brains were autopsied[108]. Along with unusual psychiatric symptoms[80],
the brain pathology was found to be vividly reminiscent[69] of Kuru, a disease
found in a New Guinea tribe of cannibals which ate the brains of their
dead[46a]. In the words of Germany's leading expert on CJD "everything suggests
that BSE is the cause..."[93].
The probable [107] link between BSE and CJD, viewed by Britain's Chief Medical
Officer as "cause for serious concern", came as a complete reversal of the
position the government held for a decade[58]. The next day 5 European countries
banned the importation of British beef[37] and 10,000 British schools dropped
beef from their menus[30]. That Friday McDonald's stopped serving British
beef[29] and by Monday, Burger King[119] and Wendy's[125] stopped too. And
Tuesday, less than a week after the announcement was made, the European Union
decided to quarantine the island, voting an immediate and indefinite worldwide
ban on the export of British beef[87]. The same day in one of the biggest
operations in decades, Ireland deployed extra police with troops on standby to
seal off its border to prevent cattle smuggling [94]. Finally, two days later,
British beef was banned in Britain, but only from cattle considered to be higher
at risk[117].
The debatedly [70] novel[3] infectious agents that cause spongiform
encephalopathies like CJD and BSE evoke no immune response [50] and consequently
may slowly accumulate[14] for an invisible latency period of up to 30 years.[60]
No one knows how many people have already been infected. John Pattison, Dean of
the University College of London Medical School and Chairman of the British
government's Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC), thinks there
could be 500,000 people already incubating CJD[27]. "At this stage," he adds,"
we have to say it's totally unpredictable."[88] Needless to say, he does not
feed beef to his grandson[82]. Microbiologist Steven Dealler, secretary of the
Spongiform Encephalopathy Research Campaign, places the possible death count at
2 million people[118]. Professor Pattison reportedly agreed with this worst case
scenario assessment.[118] This could mean up to a half million deaths a year as
the epidemic peaks into the next century according to Richard Lacey[64] , a
microbiology consultant for the World Health Organization and child health
specialist.[68]
Called the "most intriguing, unsolved puzzle in modern biology"[141] it is now
close to being generally accepted that the cause of both the disease in humans
and cows isn't a virus or a bacteria, but a "prion", an infectious protein.[78]
Not only is it not known how they replicate[6], the whole concept challenges the
basic tenets of biology.[45] Because of their unique makeup, they are
practically invulnerable. They are not adequately destroyed by cooking[13],
canning[14], nor freezing.[40] Chemicals or enzymes which degrade nucleic
acids[55], proteolytic enzymes of the digestive tract[49], and usable doses of
UV or ionizing radiation[40] are all ineffective in destroying their
infectivity. Even heat sterilization[40], domestic bleach[59a], and
formaldehyde[14] sterilization have little or no effect. In fact, the only way
to ensure that one's burger is safe is to marinate it in Drain-O (or other
concentrated alkali).[59] They are the smallest[9], most lethal
self-perpetuating biological entities in the world.[74] In six years, BSE has
gone from the most serious threat ever posed to British agriculture[44] to what
the Prime Minister calls the worst crisis to confront the government in general,
since the Falklands War.[72] Widespread fear first struck in 1989[19]. Only
months after the government concluded that the disease probably wouldn't spread
to other species[1], Max, someone's pet Siamese, died of a hitherto unknown
feline spongiform encephalopathy[68]. BSE-infected pet food was "overwhelmingly
the most li kely explanation."[36] And then zoo animals started dropping
dead.[4] Together, this sparked a public uproar[19] with unprecedented media
attention.[50] Fearing its spread into the human population, hospitals[34],
nursing homes[34], and over 2000 schools[ 21], affecting over 750,000 school
children[7], stopped serving beef or restricted its consumption. By May 1990, a
quarter of the population reportedly refused to eat beef.[38] In six months beef
prices dropped 10[5]-25%[3], devastating the cattle industry. The final blow
came when Australia[43], Israel[43], and a dozen other countries[24] banned the
importation of British beef because of the BSE epidemic.
After a $6.5 million advertising campaign touting red-meat consumption, from
Britain's Meat and Livestock Commission[34], though, and the Minister of
Agriculture munching burgers with Cordelia[100], his four-year-old daughter for
the TV cameras[16], the schools put beef back on the menu[50] and beef
consumption regained semi-normal levels.[38] Despite continued warnings from
scientists like Lacy, the European community had lifted its ban and most other
countries had greatly relaxed their trade restricti ons[7] until news of these
first human deaths recently broke.[90]
Now with the worldwide ban in effect, Britain has been forced to agree to kill
and incinerate[26] (or perhaps mince and bury)[103] millions of cattle[75] at a
total cost of billions of dollars[11]. The decision is supported by the Minister
of Agriculture[119] and the National Farmer's Union[119], while admitting the
mass slaughter would be 'too horrific to contemplate.'[120] In response to the
proposed slaughter, an Hindi group in India offered the afflicted cows sanctuary
while a Cambodian newspaper suggested that the cows be used to detonate the
country's buried landmines.[145]. The extermination may not have eliminated the
epidemic, though, as evidence exists that prions can remain infectious for years
in the soil[61] and/or may be harbored by insects.[76] A better solution would
seem to be to finding out which cows were actually infected instead of just
indiscriminate killing. Such a test for detecting BSE in live cattle was offered
to the British government seven years ago by Harash Narang, a clinical
virologist with the public health service[85]. Dr. Narang was subsequently
fired, and reportedly had his tires slashed five times, his home broken into,
and his brakes tampered with[126]. Critics presume the government did not want
the public to know how much infected beef was entering the food chain[126] and
therefore discouraged such tests to protect the $4.6 billion beef industry[85]
In fact Dr. Lacey claims that the British government has at all stages concealed
facts and corrupted evidence beyond much reasonable doubt[68].
The Labor Party charged the government with a "reckless disregard for public
health"[119], "seriously complacent decisions"[121] historically and a
"pathetic"[90] response to the current crisis. Others echoed similar charges of
procrastination and delay [85]. A New Scientist editorial explained how the
British government "tried to push scientific advice aside when it did not suit
them."[106] An editorial in The Lancet criticized the government for making the
error of equating the absence of evidence of risk with evidence of little or no
risk.[82] Statements like "There's no way of predicting..." seemed to transform
in the halls of government into "There is no evidence..."[107]. British
agriculture minister Angela Browning's January pronouncement that her
government's stance was "ultra precautionary" [115] bears a certain resemblance
to similar statements now coming from the United States government.[116] Six
months ago Britain's Prime Minister was still asserting that there was
absolu-tely no connection between BSE and CJD[115] and still attempts to
reassure the public that beef is safe to eat to this day[82]. Likewise the USDA
continues to adamantly parrot day after day that there is no BSE in the
USA[130].
one of many imported from the UK before both Canada and the US banned the
importation of British cattle, was found on a ranch in Alberta, Canada.[8] Of
the 499[116] British cattle imported into the US before the 1989 ban, 188 of
them have been melted down into lard and protein[8] (presumably for other
livestock to eat) and 35 remain unaccounted for.[116] One of the imported bulls
slaughtered had a "central nervous system abnormality" of which the USDA
reported, "There is no definitive evidence that [the bull] either had or did not
have BSE."[8] Although the importation of British beef has been banned from the
US for a decade due to an unrelated disease[7], over 13 tons of meat and bone
meal, which has been implicated in the birth of the British epidemic, has come
into the US from England between 1982 and 1989.[2]
"BSE was 'almost certainly'[10] caused by feeding cattle ground up, dead,
diseased sheep"[18] infected with an ovine spongiform encephalopathy known as
scrapie.[20] In modern agribusiness, cows are no longer herbivores. "Protein
concentrates" (or meat and bone meal, both euphemisms for mashed- up bits of
other animals left over from the slaughterhouse) are fed to dairy cows[22] to
improve milk production,[65] for example. The real problem now, though, is not
that we've made cows meat eaters but that we've turned them into cannibals as
well; the recycling of the remains of infected cows into cattle feed[60] has
probably led to the epidemic's explosive spread.[42] An editorial in the British
Medical Journal described BSE as resulting "from an accidental experiment on
the dietary transmissibility of prion disease between sheep and cows."[57] A
subsequent experiment of this kind, with humans, probably occurred in England in
the late 1980's when meat contaminated with BSE entered the food chain.[57] The
result of this experiment is awaited "as we live through the incubation period"
over the next decades.[57]
Indigenous conditions here conducive to a BSE outbreak include the presence of
scrapie in 39 states.[54] The 40-year[52] USDA Scrapie Eradication Program has
been deemed a "dismal failure"[63] and even implicated in the recent rise of
scrapie-infected sheep.[54] Admitting defeat, the USDA scrapped the Scrapie
Eradication Program 2 years ago and replaced it with an "entirely voluntary"
control program.[21] The proportion of sheep to cattle in the US is dramatically
smaller than in the British Isles though , which helps minimize the risk of an
outbreak.[65] This is a moot point, however, if BSE is already here. Since 1947
there have been 25 outbreaks of Mink Spongiform Encephalopathy (also called TME)
on US fur farms.[22] This perplexed researchers who were unable to orally infect
mink with scrapie-infected sheep brains.[49] A clue came in 1985 when TME wiped
out a population of minks in Wisconsin who hadn't eaten any sheep.[35] Their
diet consisted almost exclusively of dairy cattle called "downers,"[54] an
industry term describing a syndrome in which cows mysteriously drop down and are
too sick to get up.
The possibility, then, that US dairy herds were harboring some form of BSE
intrigued University of Wisconsin veterinary scientist Richard Marsh.[65] To
test this, Marsh inoculated US cattle with the infected mink brains.[49] As
predicted, they died.[49] And when he fed the brains of these cows to healthy
(Sorry. Lost this bit due to computer problem. Believe brains were fed to
healthy mink who then came down with TSE.)
BSE cases have been severely underreported with as few as 60% of clinical
cases reaching UK government statistics. It was reported in the Sunday Telegraph
that "British officials believe that some European countries concealed or
ignored evidence of 'mad cow disease' for fear of the consequences for their own
farming industries."[124] The problem, as many English pundits saw it, is that
the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food represents the interests of
both consumers and the beef industry.[78] A similar conflict of interest exists
in the United States.
The mandate of the USDA is to promote agricultural products but also to protect
consumer health. In Britain, at least, it would seem that the government's
attempt at protecting the beef industry by concentrating more on PR crisis
management than on doing anything substantial ended up not only hurting the
industry, but consumers, farmers, and the government as well.[98] With
scientists like Marsh saying "The exact same thing could happen over here as
happened in Britain,"[35] and with beef consumption already at a thirty-year
low,[34] the USDA is justifiably worried. There was even a complaint filed with
the FDA concerning a woman with CJD who had been taking a dietary supplement
containing bovine tissue.[4] Like England, we have been feeding dead cows to
living cows for decades.[7] In fact, here in the US a minimum of 14% of the
remains of rendered cattle is fed to other cows[49] (another 50% goes on the pig
and chicken menu).[2] In 1989 alone almost 800 million pounds of processed
animals were fed to beef and dairy cattle.[115] Partly because of this, the USDA
has conceded that "the potential risk of amplification of the BSE agent is much
greater in the United States" than in Britain.[8]
To make things worse, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of animal
protein in commercial dairy feed since 1987.[35,49] The recent introduction of
bovine growth hormone will only increase the need for rendered animal proteins
in the rations of dairy cattle--of whom we eat 2.6 billion pounds of
annually[8]. According to top encephalopathy expert Joseph Gibbs, one out of
every million cattle naturally develops BSE.[65] A single teaspoon of ingested
high infectivity meat and bone meal is thought to be enough to cause BSE in a
cow[80]. Between this and evidence that prions may be able to adapt to their
hosts and become more virulent with time[22], it would seem absolutely necessary
to enact the ban and stop recycling this disease through US cattle. In June 1993
the Foundation on Economic Trends, a Washington public interest group[191],
petitioned the FDA to ban all feeding of ruminants (cows, sheep) to other
ruminants as the European Commonwealth had done three years before[23]. The
legal petition was largely ignored[115]. The next year the FDA did propose to at
least stop feeding sheep offal to cows, but it was blocked by vehement protests
from the rendering and may be dying from eating burgers, another public interest
group, the International Center for Technology Assessment, filed a similar legal
petition[115]. Leading consumer group Public Voice for Food and Health Policy
has since also called for a ban[[135].
Three days after the latest petition was filed the meat industry announced a
"voluntary" ban on feeding cows to cows[115]. In Britain they tried a similar
voluntary ban; it failed miserably[115]. In the US the same rendering industry
promised to stop feeding sheep brains to cows years ago; the FDA confirmed that
this failed also[84]. On April 3, 1996 the World Health Organization called for
a worldwide ban on feeding animal tissues to livestock[134] The FDA has promised
to "expedite" such regulation s.[132] This is expected to mean that putting a
formal ban in place will take 12 to 18 months[132]. Even with the law in
Britain, though, surprise random inspections last year showed half of the
English slaughterhouses in violation of the cow to cow ban regulations[91], but
it is better than no law at all[105].
US officials admit that it is "very difficult" to verify compliance with the
current voluntary ban[32]. In fact weeks after the "voluntary" ban was announced
by the industry the feeding of ruminant protein was still continuing at rates of
millions of pounds a day[115], supporting the director[104] of the Center for
Media and Democracy John Stauber's contention that the oxymoronic voluntary ban
was just a "worthless PR sham".[132]
A spokesperson for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA), admitted 3
years ago that his industry could indeed find economically feasible alternatives
to feeding rendered animal protein, but that the NCBA did not want to set a
precedent of being ruled by "activists"[Food Chemical News, July 5, 1993].
Another NCBA spokesperson, Gary Weber, appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show this
April[131]. Clearly alarmed and disturbed by the fact that cows in the US are
forced to eat cattle remains, Oprah swore she would never eat another burger
again[131]. Our government knew that the such feeding practices would be
"vulnerable to media scrutiny" as portrayed in an internal PR crisis management
document.[115] After Oprah tried to remind the audience that cows were supposed
to be herbivores, Dr. Weber defended the practice by stating "Now keep in mind,
before you--you view the ruminant animal, the cow, as simply a
vegetarian--remember that they drink milk."[131]
Cattle prices plummeted after the show aired.[97] The president of the National
Cattlemen's beef Association called Oprah "a cheerleader for...anti-beef
propaganda."[203] "We're not going to sit back and let trash TV trash a vital
industry..." said the Texas Agriculture Commissioner in a prepared
statement.[97] Texas agriculture officials are planning to bring a lawsuit
against the opposing guest on the show, Howard Lyman, a cattle rancher turned
vegetarian, under a 1995 state law that prohibits unfounded comments about
perishable food items[97]. These are among the same Texas officials that
responded to the tragic news of the human deaths in Britain by staging a mocking
April 4 publicity stunt cook-out.[115] On the show was Beryl Rimmer, whose 16
year old granddaughter lay in a coma, blind and dying, one of the ten diagnosed
with the new variant of CJD[131]. A doctor from the government's CJD
surveillance unit reportedly told her not to make her granddaughter's plight
public; she should "think of the economy and the Common Market."[68]
In the same show Weber asserted that no
animal could ever enter a US packing plant displaying BSE symptoms[131]. Even if
this is true, the majority of infected and infectious cattle become beef before
clinical symptoms arise.[58] In fact, for every "mad " cow incinerated in the
UK, there may be hundreds slaughtered and sold to butchers before any overt
symptoms develop.[51] Narang estimates that a third of all English cattle going
into the food chain are infected with BSE.[133] Because of this, it is estimated
that every adult in the UK has eaten on average 50 meals containing tissue from
infected cattle[126].
The debatedly [70] novel[3] infectious agents that cause spongiform
encephalopathies like CJD and BSE evoke no immune response [50] and consequently
may slowly accumulate[14] for an invisible latency period of up to 30 years.[60]
No one knows how many people have already been infected. John Pattison, Dean of
the University College of London Medical School and Chairman of the British
government's Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC), thinks there
could be 500,000 people already incubatin g CJD[27]. "At this stage," he adds,"
we have to say it's totally unpredictable."[88] Needless to say, he does not
feed beef to his grandson[82]. Microbiologist Steven Dealler, secretary of the
Spongiform Encephalopathy Research Campaign, places the possible death count at
2 million people[118]. Professor Pattison reportedly agreed with this worst case
scenario assessment.[118] This could mean up to a half million deaths a year as
the epidemic peaks into the next century according to Richard Lacey[64] , a
microbiology consultant for the World Health Organization and child health
specialist.[68]
Called the "most intriguing, unsolved puzzle in modern biology"[141], it is now
close to being generally accepted that the cause of both the disease in humans
and cows isn't a virus or a bacteria, but a "prion", an infectious protein.[78]
Not only is it not known how they replicate[6], the whole concept challenges the
basic tenets of biology.[45] Because of their unique makeup, they are
practically invulnerable. They are not adequately destroyed by cooking[13],
canning[14], nor freezing.[40] Chemicals or enzymes which degrade nucleic
acids[55], proteolytic enzymes of the digestive tract[49], and usable doses of
UV or ionizing radiation[40] are all ineffective in destroying their
infectivity. Even heat sterilization[40], domestic bleach[59a], and formal
dehyde[14] sterilization have little or no effect. In fact, the only way to
ensure that one's burger is safe is to marinate it in Drain-O (or other
concentrated alkali).[59] They are the smallest[9], most lethal
self-perpetuating biological entities in th e world.[74] In six years, BSE has
gone from the most serious threat ever posed to British agriculture[44] to what
the Prime Minister calls the worst crisis to confront the government in general,
since the Falklands War.[72] Widespread fear first struck in 1989[19]. Only
months after the government concluded that the disease probably wouldn't spread
to other species[1], Max, someone's pet Siamese, died of a hitherto unknown
feline spongiform encephalopathy[68]. BSE-infected pet food was "overwhelmingly
the most li kely explanation."[36] And then zoo animals started dropping
dead.[4] Together, this sparked a public uproar[19] with unprecedented media
attention.[50] Fearing its spread into the human population, hospitals[34],
nursing homes[34], and over 2000 schools[ 21], affecting over 750,000 school
children[7], stopped serving beef or restricted its consumption. By May 1990, a
quarter of the population reportedly refused to eat beef.[38] In six months beef
prices dropped 10[5]-25%[3], devastating the cattle indust ry. The final blow
came when Australia[43], Israel[43], and a dozen other countries[24] banned the
importation of British beef because of the BSE epidemic.
After a $6.5 million advertising campaign touting red-meat consumption, from
Britain's Meat and Livestock Commission[34], though, and the Minister of
Agriculture munching burgers with Cordelia[100], ed from cattle considered to be
higher at risk[117].