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By Greg McCune
CHICAGO (Reuters)
- Americans are suddenly waking up to the threat the deadly mad
cow disease ravaging Europe could pose to an icon of their culture
-- the hamburger.
This is, after
all, the land of meat-eaters in search of a fast-food fix at a
McDonald's restaurant, the land of the cowboy and of a president,
George W. Bush, who retreats to his Texas cattle ranch to get
away from it all.
While the
triumph of vegetarians has long been predicted, Americans still
are among the world's leading carnivores, each eating nearly 100
pounds (45 kg) of beef and veal a year. Beef was expected to feature
prominently on the menu of many parties celebrating the leading
American sporting event of the year, the professional football
championship "Super Bowl" on Sunday.
Until recently,
the alarming spread of the brain-destroying illness known as bovine
spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), from Britain to several continental
European countries -- and the scare that has turned Europeans
off beef en masse -- had barely registered on the American radar
screen.
No case of
mad cow disease has ever been found in the United States and government
and industry officials have repeatedly pledged to keep it that
way. British officials at first denied the disease could spread
to humans but have since admitted it could when more than 80 people
died of a human version called new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
after eating infected beef. Three people have died in France.
Just a whiff
of trouble over mad cow disease on this side of the Atlantic was
enough last week to send a shudder through U.S. agribusiness and
some markets. Cattle futures prices and the shares of McDonald's
fell on Thursday after the Food and Drug Administration announced
it had quarantined some cattle in Texas on suspicion they had
been fed rations containing cattle parts in violation of rules
to prevent mad cow disease.
There was
no suggestion that the cattle actually had contracted the disease,
only that they had been fed the wrong rations. A leading producer
of animal feed, Purina Mills Inc., admitted on Friday that it
had produced the feed containing meat and bone meal from ruminant
animals, and said it halted the use of such meat and bone meal
in all its feed.
Scientists
believe one way mad cow disease can be transmitted is through
a cannibal-like feeding to cattle of ground up parts of other
cattle or ruminants, a practice the U.S. has banned since 1997.
OUTBREAK
WOULD BE A CALAMITY
"I can't
imagine what would happen if ever we had a suspected case here
in the U.S.," said Chuck Levitt, senior livestock analyst
for Alaron Trading Corp in Chicago. "What a calamity that
would be for the industry."
The U.S. cattle
herd is nearly 100 million animals, the single largest segment
of U.S. agriculture. The production of grain-fed beef in the United
States is among the most intensive in the world with massive feedlots
containing thousands of cattle in close quarters.
Some of the
feedlots are so large that visitors to the towns on the plains
of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska where most are located,
can smell the distinctive manure from miles away depending on
the direction of the wind.
In Europe,
intensive agriculture has come under attack as helping to spread
mad cow disease.
Food safety
advocates said the Texas quarantine has highlighted loopholes
in U.S. efforts to prevent mad cow disease. They are skeptical
of government and industry assurances that the disease could never
happen here, citing the failure of similar food pledges in the
past.
Last summer,
after repeated U.S. government and industry assurances that the
use of gene-modified grain in U.S. foods was not a problem, a
significant scare erupted over a gene-altered corn variety not
approved for human consumption because it was suspected of causing
allergies.
The discovery
of the unapproved corn variety, Starlink, in dozens of foods such
as taco shells prompted a massive food recall and caused major
disruption to the U.S. domestic and international grain marketing
system.
ARE AMERICANS
SAFE FROM MAD COW?
In the last
two weeks, U.S. media have begun to highlight the mad cow scare
in Europe with prominent stories in newspapers and on television,
including a feature on ABC TV's leading evening news program that
asked: "Are Americans Safe From Mad Cow?"
The answer
to that question, according to government and industry, is yes.
But food safety advocates are not so sure.
"The
government agencies say they have erected this firewall (against
mad cow). We don't have a firewall. It's more like a white picket
fence," said Michael Hansen, a research associate with the
Consumers Union in Washington.
The United
States has not imported any meat or bone meal from Britain for
a decade, which U.S. officials said was an important move to prevent
the disease crossing the Atlantic. It also has banned imports
of meat from Europe.
But critics
such as Hansen said the possibility exists of a home-grown variety
of mad cow disease.
At least two
maladies of the same general family as mad cow are present in
the United States -- scrapie in sheep, and chronic wasting disease
in some wild deer and elk.
Furthermore,
the FDA has said that the rules banning the feeding of ruminant
meat and bone meal to cattle have been flouted. The cattle industry
has called for a "zero tolerance" policy to get producers
of feed to comply with the rules.
The National
Cattlemen's Beef Association has called an emergency meeting for
Monday in Washington of feed industry and government officials
to underscore the need for vigilance.
"If there
are folks that don't understand the seriousness of the situation,
they need to be brought to understand that," the organization's
chief executive Charles Schroeder told Reuters in a recent interview.
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