Government Officials, Pressured by Meat Industry, Fail to Safeguard Public from Outbreak of Mad Cow Disease in U.S.

Interview with John Stauber, author of "Mad Cow USA", conducted by Scott Harris

When officials announced that they had found the first case of mad cow disease in the U.S. on Dec. 23, critics of government regulations and testing procedures were not surprised. The discovery of the infected dairy cow in Washington state came seven months after another cow in Canada was found to have mad cow, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Although the U.S. and Canada had banned the use of beef bone and flesh in cattle feed linked to the transmission of the disease in 1997, enforcement of the regulations were found to be lax by the congressionally-funded General Accounting Office.

When an outbreak of mad cow exploded in the United Kingdom in the 1990s, the British government took drastic steps to stop the spread of the disease, including the destruction of 4.5 million cattle, a strict feed ban and comprehensive testing of cows destined for the slaughterhouse. Thus far, more than 130 cases of Kreutzfeldt-Jacob, the fatal brain disorder in humans sometimes linked to mad cow disease, have been diagnosed mostly in Britain.

Dr. Stanley Prusiner, who in 1997 won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his identification of prions that cause mad cow disease, has criticized the Bush administration's secretary of agriculture Ann Veneman for not taking the steps necessary to prevent the spread of the disease. Between The Lines Scott Harris spoke with John Stauber, co-author of the 1997 book, "Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?" who reviews the many warnings about the disease ignored by government officials -- and the safeguards which could still be put in place to halt its spread.

Read "Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?" online by going to the Center for Media and Democracy's website at: www.prwatch.org

Related links:

"Expert Warned that Mad Cow Disease Was Imminent," by Sandra Blakeslee, New York Times, Dec. 25, 2003

"U.S. Estimates Mad-Cow Exposure at 81" by the Wall Street Journal, Dec. 30, 2003

"Slaughterhouse Politics: Ranchers Fought Rules That Might Have Prevented Mad Cow," by James Ridgeway,Village Voice, Dec. 30, 2003

"FDA Blasted Over Past Enforcement of Feed Ban," by Vanessa Ho, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Dec. 27, 2003

"Mad Cow Out of the Barn,"Madison Capital Times editorial, Dec. 27, 2003

"US Mad Cow Link Questioned in Creutzfeldt-Jakob Cases," by Jed Seltzer and Elinor Mills Abreu, by Reuters, Dec. 27, 2003

"GOP Congress Scuttled Meat Protection Measure," by Mark Sherman, The Associated Press, Dec. 24, 2003

"Inspections for Mad Cow Lag Those Done Abroad," by Marian Burros and Donald G. McNeil Jr., New York Times, Dec. 24, 2003

"USDA Refused to Release Mad Cow Records," by Steve Mitchell, UPI, Dec. 24, 2003

"Don't Have a Mad Cow, Man" editorial by the Bennington Banner (Vt.); Dec. 27, 2003

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