So far, only one mad cow with a disease has been found in the United States, but experts from various countries have pointed out that such an event cannot be isolated. Where are the remaining sick cows? Can they be found? British "New Scientist" magazine recently published an article evaluating the measures taken by the United States to deal with the BSE incident.
On December 9, 2003, a farmer in Washington State, USA, slaughter worker Dave Louthan was busy, he was dealing with those cows lying sick. A 6-year-old Dutch cow caught his attention. The cow is causing disturbance in the herd. At the time, the US Department of Agriculture funded each slaughterhouse to provide samples of brain tissue from sick cattle for testing to check whether the cattle had mad cow disease. Louthan took a sample of the cow's brain tissue.
Two weeks later, the US Department of Agriculture announced that this was the first case of mad cow disease found in the United States.
For this nightmare, the US government has always hoped, or has always believed, that it will not come. Although European countries have warned for many years that American cattle are likely to have been infected with mad cow disease, the US government has always insisted that it is free of mad cow disease in the country, and American beef is absolutely safe, even its neighboring Canada announced in May 2003. After discovering the first case of mad cow disease, the United States still insisted on saying so.
This is devastating news. Overnight, US beef exporters were hit hard. The US Department of Agriculture official said three days later that at least 25 countries and regions announced that they would stop importing US beef and beef cattle. The imports of these countries and regions accounted for about 90% of US exports of such products. Some experts had predicted that if the United States experienced a mad cow disease crisis similar to that started in the late 1980s in the United Kingdom, the economic loss could be as high as 15 billion US dollars, and as many as 300,000 cattle would need to be destroyed in the next few years.
The sick cow is just the tip of the iceberg
The US Department of Agriculture immediately took measures to protect consumers, mainly prohibiting the consumption of high-risk substances such as the brain, spinal cord and intestines of cattle, and invited experts from home and abroad to evaluate their measures and guide the government's next steps.
In February of this year, the Panel of Experts made a report and, while making some positive comments on the US government, pointed out: Although the infected cows are from Canada, in principle, the US domestic cattle are still “safeâ€, but in fact, the There is no strict distinction between the cows, so this conclusion does not make much sense. Moreover, the report pointed out many problems:
BSE can still spread among cattle.
The risks faced by Americans have not been eliminated.
No one knows how many crazy cows there are.
In 2000, scientists working for the European Union pointed out that there may be mad cow disease in the United States. Their reason is: Before 1996, the United States imported British cattle, and some of them must have been infected with mad cow disease. Second, before 1996, the United States imported 44 tons of feed made from infected beef and bones from the United Kingdom. This figure is enough to cause the epidemic of mad cow disease, because only 20 tons of infected feed caused Swiss Mad cow disease disaster. Moreover, after 1996, the United States imported more than 800 cattle from other European countries, and these countries have subsequently discovered cases of mad cow disease. In 1997, under pressure, the United States banned the feed of beef bones from cattle. However, it was not until 2002 that the US Congress investigated and found that even when the outbreak of mad cow disease has already occurred in the United Kingdom, this ban has not been well enforced.
The experience of European countries shows that if we simply rely on the search for the diseased cow, it is easy to miss the search for mad cow disease cases, because a large number of cases are difficult to report. European countries did not realize the seriousness of the mad cow disease until large-scale active detection of livestock.
Some scientists from the US Department of Agriculture have worked hard for several years, hoping that the United States will take similar large-scale inspections, but the US government has responded more reluctantly. They only tested 5,000 cows in 2002 and 2000 cows in 2003. The opinion of the expert team this time is that this scale of testing simply cannot assess the seriousness of the problem. Experts believe that the cows infected with "mad cow disease" in the United States will definitely not be the only one that developed last year. The "crazy cow disease source" from Canada or Europe may have spread widely in the US cattle industry. The infected Dutch cows are only the tip of the iceberg, and the specific number of sick cows is difficult to estimate. Scientists from Switzerland even believe that based on their research on the epidemic trend of mad cow disease in Europe, the United States may "add a mad cow every month" in the future.
Test plan widely criticized
The US Department of Agriculture then adjusted its testing plan. From June this year to the end of next year, they will test 200,000 to 300,000 "high-risk" livestock. But this number is still far from the hope of experts, because the detection rate in France is much larger than that in the United States.
Moreover, the basis of this testing program is that the US government can find a sufficient number of "high-risk" livestock, but this is not easy to do. The United States Department of Agriculture requires farmers to send sick animals for inspection spontaneously, but once the animals are found to be infected with mad cow disease, the entire farm ’s livestock will be destroyed, so if there are suspicious animals, the farmer is likely to take "shooting-burying" -Silence "in three steps. Some American veterinarians said: "Several large beef producers said that they would not let the USDA contact their sick animals." Mo Salman, an epidemiologist at the University of Colorado, said: "I plan to test The number of livestock is impressive, but I doubt whether the government has the ability to obtain all the sick animal samples required within 18 months. "Salman said that the USDA has agreed to his request and will monitor the quality of the testing program to a certain extent. .
Other aspects of the inspection plan have also attracted the attention of experts. The test plan is divided into two steps, in which the first step of the test has two methods to choose from: one method is based on the biotechnology called "Elisa"; the other is called "westerblot". The former is easy to give "false positive" results; the latter is not easy to misdiagnose. When discussing the testing standards for mad cow disease in relevant international conferences, officials of the US Department of Agriculture once stated that countries with a low incidence of mad cow disease are suitable to adopt the “western blunt†method to avoid unnecessary panic caused by the public, but the actual practice in the United States now differs from its statement Violated. Although the testing technology of five companies has passed the government certification, including the “western blot†product of a Swiss company, all supervision laboratories of the United States Department of Agriculture now adopt the “Elisa†testing method produced by California BioRad. The results are predictable. In early July of this year, two false positive reports were announced.
Regarding the US government's choice of testing laws, experts have two comments. One comment suggested that BioRad ’s products were chosen only for the credit of its sales staff; another statement pointed out that the USDA prefers to announce some false positive cases before correcting the results. Purpose It is to make the beef market and consumers less and less sensitive to such diagnostic reports.
Two major loopholes
However, regarding the US government ’s response to the BSE incident, although there are various flaws, the experts still gave the US government a high score for its regulatory measures. Spread and protect people from infection.
Experts believe that in addition to prohibiting the feeding of ruminants to feed made from ruminant organs, the United States has not taken further measures to prevent the spread of mad cow disease. European experience shows that this is far from enough, and the various routes of transmission of BSE must be cut off. For example, when animal feed is fed to pigs and poultry, cross-infection and incorrect feeding on the farm are likely to cause cattle to eat animal feed by mistake. In addition, pigs and poultry that have eaten animal feed and hay used for raising poultry may be used as feed for cattle. In the long run, mad cow disease will continue to linger. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration originally intended to introduce policies prohibiting the use of cattle blood for cattle feed, prohibiting the use of high-risk cattle residues for pig and poultry feed, and also forbidding the use of sick cattle for feed and poultry. Hay was used for cattle feed, but it was postponed because of "extensive consultation".
The loopholes for protecting people from infection are even greater. Experts pointed out that many slaughterhouses use advanced meat and bone separation systems. The carcasses are placed on the ground and then enter a filter. Cross infection of the bovine spinal cord is prone to occur. These meats will enter the people's food chain. To make matters worse, for many slaughter workers, they do not know the severity of BSE. In Europe, even after years of strict control, there are still slaughter workers who leave the spinal cord on the carcass, and the United States has no relevant regulatory measures so far. And for the mad cow disease, consumers in the United States do not seem to be very alert, and beef sales are basically not affected.
Of course, it is gratifying that the human body is not easily infected with mad cow disease. Taking the United Kingdom as an example, although millions of people have been exposed to the mad cow virus, only 142 cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease have been diagnosed so far. But "New Scientist" pointed out that the painful lessons of European countries tell the United States that effective action must be taken immediately, otherwise the consequences will be unimaginable.
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