The Mad Cow Cover-Up

The U.S. government’s reaction to the threat of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or “mad cow disease” has been a case study in denial and deception—instead of taking a firm stance to stop the spread of this fatal disease, the government continues to put industry interests above public health concerns. For instance, though it is now very clear that BSE is the result of feeding animals and their waste back to each other, the United States has refused to take the necessary steps to ensure that this practice stops. John Stauber, author of Mad Cow USA, told reporters, “The entire U.S. policy [on mad cow disease] is designed to protect the livestock industry’s access to slaughterhouse waste as cheap feed.”⁴² Government agencies have also dragged their feet in banning the use of cow’s brains, spinal cords, and other infectious body parts in foods and cosmetics, and they have yet to institute a program that would make cows traceable back to their original herds.

In September 2003, a few months after a cow who was infected with BSE was discovered in Canada, the USDA Undersecretary of Food Safety Elsa Murano sent a memo concerning options for controlling the spread of mad cow disease in the United States to then-Secretary Anne Veneman. Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, explains that in the memo: “Murano proposed three options for reducing ‘potential human exposure to the agent that causes [BSE].’ The first suggested keeping the brains and spinal cords from cattle 30 months or older, as well as part of the small intestine[s] of all cattle, out of the human food supply. Such a prohibition would reduce the risk of human exposure to [BSE] by an estimated 37.2 percent and would cost the meat industry no more than $6.3 million a year. Options two and three contained stricter limits on what could be sold, reducing the human risk by as much as 96.7 percent and costing the industry $37.1 million a year, at most. Murano recommended option one, which was the most ‘cost effective’ for the industry. Staffers say that Veneman decided none was worth implementing. Three months later, the heifer with [mad cow] disease was found in Washington State.”

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