Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety (45 page)

BSE first appeared soon after cows ate the inadequately rendered meat-and-bone meal supplements. These supplements almost certainly contained offal from sheep infected with scrapie; Great Britain raises far more sheep than cattle, and scrapie is common in British sheep. Later, they
surely also contained offal from cows with as yet unrecognized BSE. Veterinarians observed the first case of BSE in a cow in 1984 and confirmed the disease in 1985. During the next few years, the number of BSE cases in cows increased, signaling a growing epidemic. In 1988, an investigating committee deduced that the sheep disease must have jumped to cows. At this point, the British government banned the use of offal in cow feed and required farmers to report BSE cases and to destroy suspect cattle, all the while repeatedly reassuring the public that British beef posed no health risk.

Despite the new regulations, government officials promised support to the beef industry. The prime minister, John Major, said he was “absolutely determined to reduce the burden of regulation on business.”
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Although the government vehemently denied it, beef producers often ignored the 1988 feed ban and nearly half of all the BSE cases occurred in cows born
after
that year. In 1990, the government appointed yet another BSE review committee, but, according to a later investigation, pressured its members to declare beef safe to eat. Meanwhile, cases of BSE in cows continued to rise, reaching a peak in 1993 and then declining gradually as the use of rendered meat-and-bone meal ceased. During the next few years, scientists became increasingly convinced that mad cow disease might be transmitted to people. Britain banned the use in human food of mechanically recovered meat from cow vertebrae (lest it be contaminated with brain or nervous tissue), but health officials continued to deny any risk from this practice. The European Union, however, banned the sale of British beef for three years, noting that the disease seemed to be a particularly British problem.
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These actions came much too late. In 1996, British doctors identified ten young people with a previously unknown variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD). The new disease differed from the slowly progressing CJD that typically occurs in older people. It affected
young
adults, it looked different, and it progressed much more rapidly. Dismayed scientists immediately suspected that the new variant disease represented yet another species jump, this time from cows to people. People who “caught” the new disease must have eaten BSE-contaminated beef before the offal-feeding bans went into effect or during the period of government delays, denials, finger pointings, and failures to enforce rules.
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By all accounts, British officials did not handle this new crisis any better and only grudgingly admitted the link between mad cow disease and the human variant. In what appeared to be an act of explicit manipulation, the agriculture minister, John Gummer, appeared on television to
show his faith in British meat: he fed a hamburger to his four-year-old daughter. Overall, the government seemed to be acting on behalf of the cattle industry rather than protecting public health. Reinforcing a familiar theme in this book, the
Lancet
blamed the secret ways in which government and expert committees operate—and the lack of public accountability—for the failure of government to do something to stop mad cow disease and prevent its transmission to people. It pointed to “the weaknesses of separating agricultural and medical science, and of allowing one Government department to protect the interests of both the food consumers and the farming industry.”
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The appearance of the new variant disease in people caused a further crisis, this time in international trade. The European Union banned member countries from buying British beef, and McDonald’s and other such companies quickly removed it from sale. To protect the industry, the British government stopped permitting older cows (which are more likely to have developed BSE) to be used as food and began destroying them at a rate of 15,000 per week. By the end of 1998, the crisis subsided, and the European Union ended its ban. When that order took effect the next year, France continued to refuse to accept British beef. British officials threatened legal action: “We have science and the law on our side and it is regrettable that the French had ignored science and defied the law.”
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Soon after, BSE turned up in cows in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan, most likely because the animals had been fed meat-and-bone meal exported from Great Britain. Human cases of vCJD also appeared outside of Britain, perhaps because people ate British beef before the offal ban took effect.

In the United States, federal agencies first took action against BSE in 1997, when the USDA banned imports of European cattle and sheep and the FDA banned the use of animal proteins as feed for ruminant animals. In 2000, the agencies banned imports of rendered animal products from 31 countries that had either reported BSE in their cattle or could not demonstrate that cattle were free of the disease. Food safety officials say the absence of mad cow disease and vCJD in the United States is due to such preventive actions. Others, however, are skeptical that the country can remain free of either disease. More than 30 shipments of animal byproducts from prohibited countries entered the United States after the ban, but regulatory agencies could not track what happened to at least half of them, perfectly illustrating the need for a system of food traceability. FDA officials said that most of the by-products ended up in pet food, but this fate cannot be confirmed (and would be unlikely to reassure
pet owners, regardless). Inspections revealed that 20% of about 2,500 feed mills handling meat-and-bone meal took no precautions to prevent the meal from getting into animal feed. No federal agency tests for prohibited material in feed for cattle. Worse, the bans on use of meat-and-bone meal do not apply to other farm animals such as pigs or chickens because officials assume that feed for these animals never enters the food supply for cows or people. This assumption, as we learned from the StarLink episode, is overly optimistic.
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Because evidence of BSE in U.S. cows would be catastrophic for the industry, the USDA commissioned a three-year study from the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, a group sponsored in part by industry. This study, based on a “probabilistic simulation model” (translation: assumptions and best guesses), said mad cow disease posed only minimal risk to American cattle or people: “Our analysis finds that the U.S. is highly resistant to any introduction of BSE or a similar disease. . . . Measures taken by the U.S. government and industry make the U.S. robust against the spread of BSE to animals or humans should it be introduced into this country.” The report did not say that BSE could never enter the country, just that “The new cases of BSE would come primarily from lack of compliance with the regulations enacted to protect animal feed. . . . Even if they existed, these hypothetical sources of BSE could give rise to only one to two cases per year.” Therefore, “the disease is virtually certain to be eliminated from the country within 20 years after its introduction.”
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These conclusions may reassure or not depending, as usual, on point of view. A spokesman for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association said they gave “consumers and cattle producers the assurance of the safety of the American beef supply,” and the president of the American Meat Institute agreed: “The U.S. is free of many animal diseases that plague other nations, testaments to the success of government-industry efforts.” British observers, however, thought such groups must be “in denial.” Other countries, they said, also claim not to have mad cow disease but find it as soon as they look for it; any failure to test for it in large numbers of cattle is a serious mistake. But, as a BSE researcher in Oregon explained, “let’s face it, no country wants to find the disease.”
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Early in 2002, the General Accounting Office (GAO) criticized the Harvard study as based on flawed assumptions, and identified glaring weaknesses in U.S. inspection, testing, and enforcement policies against animal (and, therefore, human) prion diseases: “While BSE has not been found in the United States, federal actions do not sufficiently ensure that
all BSE-infected animals or products are kept out or that if BSE were found, it would be detected promptly and not spread to other cattle through animal feed or enter the human food supply.”
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A meat industry spokesman dismissed the GAO report as a “rehash” and complained that it failed to recognize that “the risk of BSE ever occurring in the United States is extremely low and getting lower every day.”
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As if to admit its unease with the current level of protection, however, the USDA announced that it was considering a variety of more stringent bans on use of brain, nervous tissue, and other offal from older and “downer” cows (those that died before slaughter), and that it had commissioned another report from the Harvard Center to evaluate such options.
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All in all, the experience with mad cow disease confirms that the British beef industry, like that in the United States, acts in its own self-interest regardless of consequences for public health. It also confirms that no government agency willingly makes decisions in the public interest if those decisions oppose industry interests. Finally, the mad cow experience reveals the international nature of diseases that affect the food supply. Two examples: in Japan, British meat-and-bone meal caused a case of mad cow disease, which, in turn, induced a scare responsible for a 50% drop in Japanese imports of U.S. beef, and the first case of vCJD in the United States occurred in a young British woman living in Florida. All borders are porous, food problems are global, and international strategies are required to ensure the safety of any country’s food supply.
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Such lessons were firmly reinforced in spring 2001 when an epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease devastated cattle not only in Great Britain but also in other European countries. By the time the epidemic ended, officials had destroyed 4 million animals, quarantined entire communities, and witnessed the destruction of British tourism. Foot-and-mouth disease only occasionally infects humans, but it is a severe political threat—to governments, economies, communities, and international relations.
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The cause of foot-and-mouth disease is a virus with several particularly dread-inspiring attributes. It spreads rapidly in air and water and over long distances, is highly contagious by inhalation or contact, and can be transmitted through shoes, clothing, automobile tires, pets, and wild animals. It affects cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and deer, but people only rarely. It makes animals very sick; they eventually recover from the symptoms—fever and blistered mouths and hooves—but never catch up
in growth, weight, or vitality. Animals infected with this disease become useless as meat. The United States takes precautions against foot-and-mouth disease and has not experienced an outbreak since 1929. The last previous British epidemic occurred in the late 1960s. Since early 2000, however, the disease has been reported in Russia, five countries in Asia, seven in Africa, and five in South America. Once started, it is not easy to contain.
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Thus, countries go to a great deal of trouble to eradicate foot-and-mouth disease and prevent its entry, and this disease is one of the main reasons why U.S. customs officials ask travelers whether they have recently visited farms.

A vaccine exists but poses its own international problems of trade and politics. Vaccinated animals could be carrying the virus but display no symptoms, and no country wants to import an infected animal or its products. Most countries refuse entry to meat or milk from vaccinated animals, and the rules of the European Union (EU) do not allow vaccination. Six weeks into the outbreak, however, the EU granted a waiver and allowed Britain to vaccinate animals against the disease. The British government chose not to do so, however. The Nestlé corporation, which controls much of the milk processing in the affected region, strongly opposed vaccination because it might have “potential massive negative impact on export of products to other countries.”
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Under pressure from this company and a food trade association, the government instead decided to follow standard procedures for dealing with foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks.

These procedures require officials to take three prompt actions: (1) destroy sick animals, (2) destroy healthy animals that might have come in contact with sick animals, and (3) quarantine people living in the vicinity of affected animals. Some countries confine farm families with animals that have the disease—or might have it—to what is effectively a war zone. In Holland, for example, officials did not permit members of such families to leave their property even to go to school, church, or the doctor. They permitted the besieged families to pick up supplies only at checkpoint barriers.
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Given the extent of this virus’s contagion and its ability to disrupt the food supply and the lives of citizens, it is not difficult to imagine foot-and-mouth disease as an instrument of terror. Scientists may argue about whether it is better to vaccinate animals or destroy them promptly, but this disease can destroy food supplies, communities, and international trade as well as the confidence of a population in its government. The foot-and-mouth epidemic also pointed out gaps in food safety oversight.
While it was in progress, the United States banned import of meat from the European Union. Nevertheless, at least 750,000 pounds of prohibited meat entered U.S. warehouses after the ban, in part because of the inadequate inspection capability of federal agencies.
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Before a possible bioterrorist mailed letters laced with anthrax spores, biologists knew this microbe best as a prototype for Koch’s Postulates, the rules developed in 1884 by Robert Koch, a German scientist, to prove that bacteria cause disease.
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Anthrax bacteria (
Bacillus anthracis
) are common in soil and are eaten by grazing animals. They exist in two stages: rod-shaped
bacteria
that reproduce into long chains and form
spores
when food sources are depleted. The spores are exceptionally hardy; when eaten, they reconstitute into bacteria, invade the bloodstream, reproduce rapidly, and produce deadly toxins. When an infected animal dies, the bacteria turn into spores that eventually drop into the soil and continue the cycle.
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