Less Than 1% of Cattle Tested For BSE  

Kathy Guuillermo - Letter to the Editor / SF Chronicle 14jan01 

Editor -- In the excellent article "Here's the Beef," the reporter points out that while mad cow disease has reportedly not been found in this country, it's not clear how carefully our government is looking. As it turns out, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's own Web site gives the frightening answer. The government examined the brains of "hundreds of cattle" last year to check for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease. But USDA statistics show that more than 36 million cattle were slaughtered in 2000.

This means that the brain tissue of less than one quarter of 1 percent of cattle has been examined in a laboratory-the only reliable method of testing for BSE.

Our government is concerned, but not enough. While we know that BSE is transmitted when naturally vegetarian cattle are fed bits of other infected animals, the "Food and Drug Administration established regulations that prohibit the feeding of most mammalian proteins to ruminants" (USDA Web site, my emphasis). Most, but not all.

Importation of live ruminants from mad cow infected countries was also banned several years ago, but until recently, cattle embryos were still imported. We now know that infected mother cows can pass BSE to their offspring.

The bottom line is we cannot yet be sure that we have escaped mad cow disease. The German and French governments reassured their citizens -- until people became ill with the human form of the disease. The newspapers and government web sites are reporting the latest developments. Please don't bury your heads in the sand.

KATHY GUILLERMO
People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals
Moraga