Consumer suit aims to stop use of ill cows

By Devlin Barrett
The Associated Press

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WASHINGTON — The United States' first major "mad-cow" disease scare comes just a week after a court decision reviving a lawsuit against the government's policy on so-called "downer" animals so sick or injured they must be dragged to market.

The suit, pushed by members of the New York-based animal-rights group Farm Sanctuary, claims the Department of Agriculture (USDA) is not doing enough to protect consumers from mad-cow disease in the meat of downed animals.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals resurrected the 1998 lawsuit last week, finding that a lower-court judge had wrongly dismissed the case.

In the dismissal, the judge ruled that the possibility of infection from mad-cow disease in America was too remote to justify the suit.

The appeals panel disagreed, ruling 2-1 that the man who brought the case, Michael Baur, had "successfully alleged a credible threat of harm from downed cattle."

Most of the estimated 130,000 downed animals brought to slaughterhouses every year are milk cows that are no longer productive.

USDA officials declined to comment on the resurrection of the lawsuit last week but defended their screening procedures.

Officials said that every immobile animal is inspected both before and after slaughter, and that any animal exhibiting possible symptoms of neurological disease is checked for mad-cow disease.

USDA officials have been reluctant to support an across-the-board ban on downer animals, which often end up in pet food, in the human food supply.

They have warned that a ban would lead farmers to bury the sick and injured animals on their farms instead of sending the animals to be rendered, raising the risk that diseases would spread to other livestock and wildlife.

Rendering, a process that basically cooks meat that goes into food for pets and livestock, kills most disease.

Farm Sanctuary President Gene Baustin argued that insufficient USDA efforts have risked both human and animal health, and suggested that consumers might be "eating the evidence" of a serious health risk.

Opponents of the use of downed animals tried to get a ban on the practice through Congress earlier this year.

The measure passed in the Senate but failed in the House.

The sponsor of the House measure, Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., said yesterday that both the industry and the federal government had failed to heed warnings.

He said the fallout from the single case could have a crippling effect on the meat industry.

Wayne Pacelle, a lobbyist for the Humane Society of the United States, called on the government to impose an immediate ban on "the slaughter of any downed animals for human consumption."

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