Too much mad-cow safety?

Last December, the first known case of mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE) in the United States was discovered in a Washington state cow imported from Canada. A panel of experts assembled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has said there is a "high probability" of further BSE cases in the United States. The true rate is unknown, and the department currently tests only a fraction (21,000 in 2003) of the 35 million U.S. cattle slaughtered every year.

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Yet USDA is refusing to allow a small, upscale beef-packing company to test all of its cattle, voluntarily and at its own expense, for BSE. A USDA spokesman says that such comprehensive testing would imply "a consumer safety aspect that is not scientifically warranted." The company, Denver-based Creekstone Farms, normally exports much of its beef to Japan, which has banned imports of untested U.S. beef. Creekstone is losing $200,000 a day and says it could go out of business. Larger packing companies, which can sell other meats, have opposed such testing.

Humans who eat beef from cattle with BSE may develop a similar illness called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), which is untreatable and always fatal. An outbreak of BSE in Britain in the 1980s has led to over 140 confirmed vCJD deaths there. The outbreak was spread by the now-banned practice of feeding cattle the ground-up remains of other ruminant animals, especially sheep. The United States banned the practice in 1997 and also blocks importation of all ruminants from Europe. To date, all known cases of vCJD (not to be confused with classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) have resulted from multiple-year exposure to beef from BSE-infected cattle.

USDA's obstruction of Creekstone's testing plan is only the latest development in its much-criticized handling of the December incident and its BSE policy in general. The department initially claimed that the Washington state animal was a "downer" (a cow unable to walk); downers are considered most at risk of having BSE because the disease destroys brain tissue. But several workers involved have said the animal could stand and walk, and one slaughterhouse worker has accused USDA of changing the official report of its condition. USDA also said that testing downers was sufficient to determine the incidence of mad cow disease in U.S. cattle herds, although infected animals may initially be asymptomatic. And the department said at first that it had ordered the recall of 10,400 pounds of potentially infected beef, but later amended the amount to 38,000 pounds, 17,000 of which were beyond recall.

USDA has announced a plan to test up to 268,000 cattle in a program slated to begin in June and run for 12 to 18 months. Creekstone Farms is challenging USDA's denial of permission to test for BSE.