Coloquio Column

It's Not the Cows Who Are Mad

by Larry DeWitt
January 2, 2004

Government officials and agricultural experts reassure us that one case of mad cow disease poses a minuscule risk to human health. Perhaps so; but it is almost certainly not a single case.

We need to understand the math of meat inspection in the U.S. Annually, we slaughter 40 million cattle, and we do a test for mad cow disease on only about 20,000 of these cows, as a sample of the entire population. The whole premise of the American approach to meat inspection is to do a statistical sample of the larger bovine population rather than going to the expense (it’s about the money) of actually testing all 40 million head of cattle which pass through the factory-like “processing” and “rendering” plants of America’s agribusiness food conglomerates. In Europe they test about one-third of slaughtered cattle for mad cow disease; in Japan they test 100%. In America we test 20,000 out of 40 million–that’s a 0.0005% sample size. But the whole credibility (and safety) of our food system depends on these 20,000 cows serving as an indicator of the health of the larger population. Otherwise, we would have to spend more time and money (it’s about the money) to actually check the health of these cows before we turn them into hamburger patties for McDonalds and Burger King.

Fair enough. So if our sample is a representative one, then one case of mad cow for every 20,000 head of cattle translates into 2,000 infected animals currently in the meat supply from a population of 40 million cows. Not a single case; but 2,000 cases. And if it is not a representative sample, then it is a “fig-leaf” sample; designed only to affect the pretense of testing for the disease–which should not give anyone confidence in the safety of our food supply. The only way to know when a single case of the disease is really a single case, is to test all cattle going to slaughter. Otherwise, we have to assume that one case in our sample represents 2,000 cases in the total food supply. A small point of math that no one is talking about.

And then there is the disquieting fact that it is not just a question of whether this one particular cow has been made into a hamburger that some person will eat. Any cow rendered by the saws and gutters and rippers of the slaughterhouse on the same day as a diseased cow could be contaminated. This is why the FDA has already recalled more than 10,000 pounds of beef from eight states and Guam. Need we say that one cow does not weigh 10,000 pounds! In fact, this represents roughly 20 cows–those who were slaughtered at the same processing plant on the same day as the one cow we know about who had the disease. This adds more to our math. So for each infected cow it can contaminate about 20 others. Thus our 2,000 hidden cases become 40,000. So if we are honest with ourselves, and if we admit what our procedures imply, then there are probably 40,000 infected cattle in the American food supply as we speak.

We can try to pretend that this has something to do with the origins of this particular cow–that it is a “foreigner” from Canada and so it is not real “American” beef. Apparently our cattle population is like our human population–immigrants easily cross our borders. So what? The math is still the math. A certain portion of our beef supply is from domestic sources and a certain portion from foreign suppliers. And our 20,000 testing-sample is a sample of this whole population–with whatever characteristics it has. And one case in 20,000 still translates into 40,000 infected cattle, no matter where the sample cow was born.

And the problem has nothing to do with restricting the use of "downer" cows–those already ill enough to be disabled. This would be a convenient way to avoid the problem, if only it were that simple. If we could just look at a cow and know that it has mad cow disease (because it is too ill to walk to its slaughter) then we would not need any scientific tests to detect the presence of the disease. Joe the slaughterhouse guy could be our Maginot Line against the presence of these rouge proteins (the prions which are the cause of the disease). But Joe cannot save us. Cows can carry the disease and not yet be disabled by the time they arrive at the slaughterhouse. Indeed, scientists believe that cows can carry the prions (and thus be infected) for years before they show any symptoms.

The real issue is that cattle raisers feed their cattle animal parts to fatten them up more than their natural vegetable diet can do. This means of course that they can sell them for more money. This abnormal fattening process is achieved in several ways. Cattle blood is added to cattle feed as a filler, as one still-legal technique. Thus growing cattle become a kind of vampires on the blood of their departed brethren (we do bizarre things for money). We used to chop-up the undesirable parts of the rendered cattle and put these back into the feed of their descendants–a strange sort of honoring one’s ancestors by eating them. Since 1997 this form of cannibalism has been banned (because of the first European outbreaks of mad cow in that year). Although we now ban the direct addition to cattle feed of the brain and spinal cord matter of rendered cattle, producers can still sell these waste products to raisers of other animals–such as pigs–who include them in their animal feed. And there is no ban on adding the slaughterhouse waste of pigs or other non-ruminants to cattle feed. So the twisted proteins can work their maddening way back into the cattle food chain through indirect means. Not to mention the fact that some unscrupulous food processors have been skirting the 1997 ban ever since it took effect (it’s about the money).

Where this all leaves us is that there are almost certainly more mad cow proteins in the American meat supply than the meat of a single cow. Reassuring ourselves that one diseased cow is just one diseased cow, is a pleasant self-deception with potentially unpleasant consequences. This one diseased cow is an early-warning from our early-warning system of meat inspection.

So, if we want to really protect ourselves from mad cow disease, there are only two ways to do it. Either inspect 100% of the animals slaughtered; or ban entirely the unsavory practice of turning our animals into cannibals.