Welcome to mad animal update 101.
By now, most Americans have heard about mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). BSE is one of a class of diseases known as TSEs (transmissible spongiform encephalopathy). TSE is the generic designation for a type of nasty central nervous system ailment that can also affect many other animals, such as sheep, goats, deer, elk, rats, hamsters, mice, mink, pigs, chickens, monkeys, and humans, among other species.
Fatal in all cases, it causes lesions in the brain that make it look like a puckered sponge and takes its victims through a painful and frightening end.
The Lay of the Land
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) is the TSE that affects humans. There is genetic predisposition in about 15 percent of cases, but most cases don’t have a known cause. The disease generally affects human beings fifty and older, but recently, a new variant form of CJD (nvCJD or vCJD), has killed young people in England and France. In Britain evidence has shown that nvCJD has resulted in humans from exposure to beef that was BSE contaminated. The genetic predisposition to nvCJD transmitted by cows exists in about 38 percent of the human population.
TSEs can appear "spontaneously," even in populations that are uninfected. And while it’s tough for TSEs to be transmitted naturally, they can be passed on through unnatural feeding practices, such as traditional cannibalism. In Papua, New Guinea, for example, a type of TSE called kuru was observed in the 1950s among natives who practiced ritual cannibalism. TSEs also can be transmitted by feeding animals with the remains of their own species.
The possible consequences of humans ingesting BSE-infected beef, bone meal, or anything else infected are staggering. Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, authors of Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?, allude to a Nobel-winning TSE researcher who also describes "high-tech cannibalism" as the so-called innovation of the twentieth century that basically moves tissues from an individual’s body to another individual’s body. Should a TSE become entrenched in a human population, they claim, it’s highly possible that it could spread well beyond the conventional food chain.
Susceptible transmission channels could include pharmaceuticals, dietary and herbal supplements (which can include animal parts such as glands, tracheas, brains, and testicles), cosmetics, toothpaste, chewing gum, and pet food. Gelatin, for example, is used extensively in all sorts of products from candy to gel caps and fertilizers. Transplant organs, blood supplies, and vaccines could also carry seeds of the disease. And TSEs might also spread through contaminated medical instruments and devices (i.e., heart valves, pericardium patches). Some theorize that products such as buttons, handles, lubricants, fire extinguisher foams, racquet strings, paint, and cleaning agents may also carry risks.
A Domino Theory
Abnormal prions, the deformed proteins first identified by Stanley Prusiner, a University of California at San Francisco biochemist and neurologist, have been identified as the source of TSEs. In 1997 Prusiner was awarded a Nobel Prize for his discovery, which is now widely accepted. According to Prusiner, normal prions can fold improperly, causing the disease and unleashing a domino effect.
While normal, noninfectious prions exist in all mammals, abnormal prions can unleash a chain reaction that transforms normal ones into abnormal ones by distorting them, destroying nerve cells. In successive generations, prions become more lethal by infecting at a faster rate. They can’t be inactivated by most sterilization methods, including radiation, temperatures of 600 degrees Celsius, or with the chemical sterilization concoctions that work on typical pathogens. Journalist/photographer Gabe Kirchheimer, the first to write an extensively researched article series on mad cow disease in the U.S., thinks that the prion that causes CJD is the most dangerous on the planet. "The abnormal prion lives forever, because it’s not alive: it’s the only pathogen known that doesn’t contain any genetic material," he says.
Incubation periods for CJD are long; species take years to manifest related symptoms. Some of the symptoms are not unlike those for Alzheimer’s. The holes in the brain caused by CJD lead to a loss of coordination and balance, depression, hallucinations, and dementia, followed by death. Currently there is no treatment for the illness.
While the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the cattle industry claim that neither BSE nor vCJD have been detected in the States, others point to evidence that plenty of TSEs are making their way through a variety of species in this country. Scrapie and Chronic Wasting Disease have been confirmed in sheep, goats, deer and elk (particularly in Colorado, Wyoming, and now Nebraska), mink, and even squirrels.
Doug McEwen, a thirty-year-old hunter who died of classic CJD in Utah in 1999, was a regular consumer of deer meat. However, because of his age and consumption habits, it may be more plausible that he died from vCJD. Blood plasma that McEwen had donated over a two-year period was accepted and distributed. A North Carolina company used the plasma to make various blood products and shipped them to 46 nations.
Mind-boggling? You bet. And this is only one example of how one vCJD positive victim could potentially affect thousands of other people beyond geographical borders. In early February the Sunday Times of London reported the worldwide count of CJD cases now stands at 104, of which 100 are in England. All human cases are directly attributed to BSE, and most of the victims are young. The World Health Organization estimates that between November 1986 and December 2000, the UK had racked up approximately 180,000 confirmed BSE animal cases, and other European nations had roughly 1,300. Close to 4 million cows have already been destroyed because of mad cow risks. In the U.S., scientific studies at Yale University and the University of Pittsburgh demonstrated that 13 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively, of individuals who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and other dementia had exhibited CJD. The presence of CJD was confirmed through autopsies.
Mad cow disease has now emerged in Portugal, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Italy, Spain, France, Austria, and Brazil. Eyes are watching the possible emergence of the disease in Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, and Sri Lanka, as these countries purchased animal feed from the UK while England was in the middle of its crisis.
Who’s Minding the Store?
In the 1980s only thirty-two British animals made it into the U.S. food chain; the last of the British beef imports took place in 1989. But according to the University of Minnesota’s "The Why Files" on mad cow disease, it wasn’t until 1997 that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) placed a partial ban on the feeding of "ruminant offal" to other ruminants. Others claim this partial ban went into effect in 1994. Today the USDA requires that these products carry a warning label that says basically "don’t feed to cattle and other ruminants."
It’s a start. But look at the fine print and the picture gets a bit bleaker. The policy has a loophole about the size of the Grand Canyon that exempts horses, wine, blood, gelatin, and milk from the ban on feed. In addition, rendered remains of non-ruminants, such as pigs and horses, could still be fed to cows and sheep — and vice versa, according to Dr. Michael Hansen, a highly respected scientist with the Consumer Policy Institute/Consumers Union. Then, of course, is the question of the extent to which the ban is being enforced among the numerous corporations who have a stake, so to speak, in the rendering and animal feed industries.
New York Times reporter Sandra Blakeslee, who has been investigating the current situation, revealed in an article in January 2001 that of the approximately 180 large rendering companies (of cattle and sheep), about 16 percent were not labeling their products properly nor had a system to prevent the commingling of ruminant material. Of the 347 FDA licensed feed mills that use ruminant materials, 20 percent weren’t using labels with the required warning. A total of 40 percent of the 1,593 small feed companies that handle ruminant materials have been inspected; approximately 25 percent of them had no systems to prevent commingling.
In a subsequent article, Blakeslee shared another little trade secret: it seems many U.S. pharmaceutical companies, pet food companies, and nutritional supplement manufacturers imported rendered animal protein and bovine parts that could have been contaminated in rather large quantities in 1989 and 1997.
"British export statistics show that 20 tons of‘meals of meat or offal’ that were‘unfit
for human consumption’ and probably intended for animals were sent to the United States in 1989. And 27 tons were exported to the United States in 1997, well after the government banned imports of such risky meat. No one has tried to trace this meat to determine whether it was allowed into the United States," Blakeslee said.
In late January, a Texas feed mill was found to be supplying a Texas feedlot with feed that had contaminated portions of slaughtered cows. This violated the ruminant-to-ruminant feeding practice ban, and it resembled the way in which the disease spread across the UK over ten years ago. Purina Mills offered to purchase and pull out of the food chain cycle the 1,222 cows that were "mistakenly" given the animal feed that contained the banned material.
There is not even a regulation in place, however, to prevent farmers from feeding rendered protein to non-ruminant animals, which are then consumed by people.
Perhaps prompted in part by mounting public pressure and scientific evidence that rogue prions spread more widely than previously thought, the federal government has imposed bans on beef and byproducts from numerous countries in Europe and recently Brazil, a country that has been importing British cows since the 80s. The U.S. government is also considering expanding the ban on blood donations. Individuals who lived in Britain for at least six months between 1980 and 1996 have already been banned. Now the government is considering including individuals who’ve lived at least ten years in France, Portugal, or Ireland since 1980.
According to the FDA, five major companies that make common vaccines for children (from polio to diphtheria) continued importing cow-based ingredients for their vaccines seven years after the agency asked them to stop. The agency says it uncovered this irregularity last February. As a safeguard, those cow-derived ingredients are being replaced in a number of vaccines.
What You Should Know
I asked four experts to share their insights on the most critical things that consumers in the U.S. should know about mad animal disease and its implications. Stauber says mad animal diseases are already rampant in this country — in sheep, deer, elk, and possibly cattle and pigs. To think otherwise is naïve. "Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is killing one in every five deer in parts of Colorado, and spreading across North America through game farms," he adds. "In the past two years, at least two young hunters have died of what is being called‘sporadic CJD,’ but they might be the first human victims of mad deer and elk disease."
The author and activist says it’s not enough to be vegetarian in this plight. He believes that once mad animal diseases spread into the heart of our population, contamination can occur through any of the numerous methods outlined in this article. Because the infectious agent is nearly impossible to kill through sterilization, even surgical instruments used on CJD patients can contaminate others. He warns that hundreds of vaccines and other drugs used by vegetarians come from "biologics," which means they are made from animal serum. "Glandular supplements available over the counter at health food stores in this country should be avoided because they contain concentrated parts of hundreds of animals — their glands, brain, and nerve tissue."
Above all, he says, don’t be mislead by the PR assurances of the meat industry and government agencies such as the USDA, FDA, Centers for Disease Control, and National Institutes of Health. Don’t be misled by their claims that what has been happening in the UK can’t happen here; that all that could be done to prevent the disease is being done; and that U.S. livestock is not fed rendered slaughterhouse waste anymore. "All these statements are false or misleading," says Stauber.
Molecular biologist Thomas Pringle maintains a highly respected Web site that offers researchers, students, journalists, and government and corporate representatives a plethora of reliable scientific data, news information, archives, and links. A Senior Scientific Consultant with the Sperling Biomedical Foundation in Eugene, Oregon, Dr. Pringle notes forty-five states in the U.S. have reported scrapie in sheep, and CWD in deer and elk in six states. He warns that consumers should be aware of what they eat, what it contains, and where it was sourced. "If you eat candy, for example, does it contain bovine gelatin? Was it derived in part from high-risk tissue, such as the spinal cord, and was this done in a country such as Britain that continues to have high levels of mad cow disease?"
Know that the UN has determined that one hundred countries have imported BSE-infected material from England, says Pringle. "Because animal meat and byproducts occur in thousands of products, and most countries were slow to acknowledge any BSE problem, most people in the Western world have already been exposed," he explains.
He does urge that consumers keep a balanced sense of proportion regarding the risks. If you seek to change behavior, cut out the higher risks first. "It would make no sense to throw out a rack of French wines (bovine albumin can be added to clarify wines, representing an infinitesimal risk) but then light up a cigarette and get out on the freeway on a cell phone, drinking coffee."
Ronnie Cummins is the National Director of the Organic Consumers Association and editor of BioDemocracy News, an online newsletter focused on genetic engineering, factory farming, and organics. Like Stauber, Cummins thinks the U.S. government is seriously downplaying the presence of mad-animal diseases in the U.S. He’s also convinced that mad cow disease is present in U.S. cattle populations. "The U.S. government is not properly testing cows, nor humans, to determine the present incidence of BSE or mad cow disease," he says. "Germany is presently testing 20,000 cows a week for BSE, while the U.S. has tested 12,000 cows since 1989.
"This country has tested very few of the cows they need to, such as‘downer cows.’" Downer cows are animals that are literally unable to get up, for a number of neurological reasons. BSE is one of the proven causes. He adds that the Centers for Disease Control have refused to make CJD an officially reportable disease.
Cummins thinks that government needs to ban what he labels "the dangerous practice of feeding animal meat and bone meal to all animals, including pets, as well as ban the use of bovine and other ruminant brain and nervous system tissue in nutritional supplements, cosmetics, vitamin capsules, and vaccines."
Kirchheimer charges that the U.S. government is intentionally obscuring facts regarding mad cows in this country. He says it’s part of the "long history of official obfuscation when billions of dollars in corporate interests and official credibility are at stake. Dr. Michael Hanson of Consumers Union says the authorities are doing a‘don’t look, don’t find,’ sleight of hand. The USDA is only looking for the British variant of BSE to the exclusion of other strains," he explains.
Where Does this Leave Us?
The risks surrounding mad animal diseases will be debated for some time to come. Both prevention and treatment will have far reaching implications on our economy and our national health. At the core of the problem lies policy. Existing regulations come almost a decade late, according to Stauber and Rampton, and "allow continued cannibalism feeding practices in non-ruminant animals which are consumed by humans." They note that "Pigs and chickens, for example, are routinely nourished with feed supplements derived from the bones, brains, meat scraps, feathers and even feces of their own species. The FDA rules do nothing to change these practices."
So what can we do, given the inadequate policies on the books? Stauber Rampton suggest that we need to adopt the precautionary principle, which requires that as soon as risks are known, we should take action to avoid them. It’s simple common sense, given the dire consequences already in the news. But it brings up yet another troubling question. Is there room, in U.S. policy, for simple common sense?
Resources
The best current information about mad animal diseases is at the excellent Web site maintained by Dr. Thomas Pringle.
Stauber and Rampton’s Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here is available as a free PDF download.
You can access the Organic Consumers Association at their Web site.
BioDemocracy News is an online newsletter focused on genetic engineering, factory farming, and organics.