Editorial
The ineffectiveness of mad-cow testing

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Banning meat from obviously ill cows is only a partial solution to reducing the risk that meat infected with mad-cow disease will reach U.S. dining tables.

Since testing of so-called "downer" cows was the primary way to monitor for signs of bovine spongiform encephalopathy among the 36 million U.S. cows slaughtered every year, the ban eliminates a financial incentive for producers to take their sick or injured cattle to market. The U.S. Department of Agriculture should establish a more methodical monitoring system that covers a cross-section of the cattle industry and is not dependent on voluntary participation.

Shortly after a Washington animal was found to be the first U.S. cow infected with BSE Dec. 23, Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman banned downer cows — those too sick or injured to walk — from going into the human food supply. She also implemented a number of other rules that prohibited certain parts of cattle from the supply. Monday, the Food and Drug Administration imposed rules intended to ensure the safety of cattle feed.

While the notion of slaughtering a sick animal for human consumption appalled many consumers, it has been common practice and, ironically, the primary means of monitoring the nation's cattle for BSE. Now that the financial incentive is gone, consumer advocates fear sick cows, considered more likely to have BSE, will never be tested but rather buried on farms.

Other problems exist with the monitoring system. Because of its voluntary nature, testing is spotty. Over the past two years, fewer than 100 of the 700 plants that slaughter cattle tested any cows, according to USDA data released under a Freedom of Information request by United Press International.

Nebraska, Kansas, Texas and Colorado together produce 70 percent of U.S. beef, but account for only 11 percent of the testing.

At Washington's largest slaughterhouse, Washington Beef in Toppenish, not one of the 290,000 cows slaughtered during the period was tested.

The risk of humans eating beef infected with mad-cow disease is small, as federal and state officials have insisted. USDA officials have pledged to double their testing of cows to about 40,000 this year.

That's a step in the right direction. But with the United States essentially making its main surveillance system obsolete with the downer ban, another credible system is needed.

A system, like Japan's, that tests every cow would probably be overkill, considering the United States has had only one case of BSE. But the new monitoring system should include all of the industry, across locations and across sizes of slaughterhouses. And, especially because of the potential economic damage a mad-cow find can do, the system should not rely on volunteers.

Only a credible system of monitoring will restore international faith in the health of U.S. beef.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company