Editorial for Thursday — February 12, 2004

• The illusion of safety

The illusion of safety

The trouble with asking for honest advice is that sometimes you don’t like what you hear. That’s the dilemma facing Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman, who heard last week from a panel of international experts on mad cow disease.

If Ms. Veneman takes the panel’s advice, she will take bold steps to protect American consumers and the nation’s beef industry. But if, as seems increasingly likely, she picks and chooses among their recommendations – rejecting some tough but necessary measures, while implementing less expensive steps – we’ll be dealing with mad cow disease for years to come.

The five-member advisory group was made up of veterinarians and epidemiologists. It was created to assess the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s response to a mad cow disease case in Washington state just before Christmas. Since that case came to light, the USDA has done everything in its power to point the finger of blame at Canada, where the infected calf was born, and to assure consumers American beef is safe.

While the experts praised the speed with which USDA acted, they also concluded the disease is now “indigenous in North America” and that there is a “high probability” that other U.S. cattle are infected. Meanwhile, Ms. Veneman continues to insist that the Washington case is isolated and poses no threat.

She ignores the warning at our peril and risks repeating the mistakes that characterized outbreaks of mad cow in Europe that were devastating to farmers and terrifying to consumers. She has refused to completely ban feed supplemented with animal protein, just as Great Britain did during the early 1990s. The British government maintained a partial ban until it became painfully clear that more cattle were being infected through contaminated feed. Ms. Veneman and the department she heads are responsible both for promoting American agriculture and protecting food safety. Her inaction will accomplish neither.

On Monday, less than a week after getting the committee’s recommendations, the department closed its investigation into the Washington state case and began lobbying foreign buyers to resume purchases of U.S. beef, just as the British government did 13 years ago.

It’s likely to be a hard sell. In Britain, the mad cow outbreak got worse, not better, after such assurances were given; surely foreign buyers haven’t forgotten that experience. It’s time for Ms. Veneman to face an uncomfortable reality, underscored by the advisory committee in its report: This is not an isolated case. “The significance of this (mad cow disease) case cannot be dismissed by considering it ‘an imported case,’ ” the committee wrote.

The USDA must do more to keep mad cow disease in check. A good next step would be to ban the practice of feeding animals protein derived from other animals. The department still doesn’t know the names and locations of places making livestock feed. Right now, ground up cattle can’t be fed to other cattle. But it can be fed to chickens, which can be rendered into feed for cattle. New studies suggest that may spread the disease. It has to stop. It already has in most of the rest of the world.

The USDA must also dramatically increase the number of animals tested. This year, it plans to test 40,000 of the 30 million cattle slaughtered. That’s double the number tested last year but still far too few.

Pointing to Canada as the source of our problem may make U.S. ranchers feel better, but it does nothing to protect consumers. The USDA and the beef industry say the recommendations are too expensive – the feed ban alone would cost an estimated $700 million – without adding much to protections now in place.

They’re wrong about the benefits. And unless Ms. Veneman soon sees the light, they’ll discover that the one thing more expensive than taking meaningful action is doing nothing at all.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch