ANIMAL HEALTH

On her way out the door to take a job with the UN´s UNICEF, Outgoing Ag Secretary Ann Veneman said she saw no reason to delay reopening the U.S. border to Canadian cattle. "Unless the investigation turns up something that is drastically different than the assumptions that were made in putting together the rule, I wouldn´t see a reason to change it," she said.

Ah-hah! If you reread Veneman´s parting remarks you´ll notice that she admitted that the USDA based their rule to reopen the border on ASSUMPTIONS. If I remember my high school science correctly I recall that assumptions are used to develop theories and theories, Queen Ann, are not scientific fact. And yet the USDA has maintained from the beginning that their actions were based on sound science

The USDA is not the only bunch hiding behind a veil of science fiction. When the rumor hit the streets that the NCBA might be reconsidering its position on reopening the Canadian border to live cattle in early March, R-CALF´s President Leo McDonnell sent a letter to Jan Lyons, President of the NCBA. In the letter McDonnell suggested that NCBA join together with R-CALF to defeat USDA´s Final Rule to reopen the border. "The resulting demonstration of unity by the U.S. cattle industry will undoubtedly convince Congress to act decisively to veto USDA´s Final Rule," McDonnell wrote.

As you´d expect, Lyons wanted no part of R-CALF´s proposal. She said that "we do not support litigation as the preferred means to reach a solution." Instead she said the NCBA supports a "science-based" set of regulations. This echoed her earlier comments week´s earlier when she said, "Members of the NCBA are committed to normalizing global trade based on science that protects the health of our industry."

The NCBA and the USDA have repeatedly stated that their decisions are based on the s-word: SCIENCE. As if that´s a subject far too complicated for commoners like us. So let´s call their bluff and really look at some of the science behind BSE.

Science Fiction

Here is some of the science that the USDA and the NCBA failed to consider in their attempt to reopen the border as soon as possible: Ag

• Secretary Ann Veneman´s own Advisory Committee on Foreign Animal and Poultry Diseases cautioned against making any relaxation in BSE protections until a thorough and scientific risk assessment could be completed. According to R-CALF, "the USDA did not conduct any type of a quantitative or supportable qualitative assessment of the risk they would be subjecting the American consumer to in reopening the border." All the USDA did was say that Canadian cattle provided a "low" risk but they never quantified what "low" was.
• In defining Canada as a "low risk BSE country" the USDA went against the advice of the international scientific community. According to documents made public by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), the USDA tried to get OIE to lower their standards regarding a minimum eight-year meat-and-bone meal (MBM) feed ban so that Canada could be called a "BSE minimal risk country."
  When the scientists at OIE rejected USDA´s request to relax their standards the USDA made up their own rules. The USDA said Canada should be considered a "minimal" BSE-risk country because it had complied with OTHER measures.
  R-CALF´s Bill Bullard says that the USDA is wrong in claiming that the scientific standards established by OIE do not need to be followed. "USDA has repeatedly rejected OIE´s science-based minimal criteria for designating a country as a "minimal" BSE-risk country, arguing instead that Canada´s good-faith intentions to reduce BSE are appropriate substitutes for objective, science-based evidence. USDA´s optimistic assumptions are now being discredited by emerging data," said Bullard, "and available data collected since 2001 suggest a BSE incidence in Canada on the same order of that of the most BSE-affected countries in the world." According to international scientific standards Canada qualifies only as a "moderate" BSE-risk country and as such should be practicing more intense BSE mitigation measures than those already implemented.
• Not only has the USDA disregarded international scientific standards they have also ignored real-world events. Following a shocking exposé in the Vancouver Sun about the disregard for Canada´s meat and bone meal ban, the Calgary Herald charged that "Health Canada buried a 2000 report that warned that BSE was already ‘silently incubating´ in the Canadian herd." In addition, investigative journalists at the Calgary Herald found that, "Canada´s feed ban was highly permissive, allowing some dangerous products, such as cattle blood, to be used in feed and that Canada continued to import questionable products, such as cattle tallow and blood, and even animal feed, from areas that had severe BSE problems, like France." Health Canada also found that feed processors were putting parts from hogs and chickens into cattle feed, thus creating a situation ripe for cross-contamination.
• NCBA President and apparent amateur scientist, Jan Lyons, has made the statement that "feed bans break the cycle of the disease."
  Yes Jan, but that assumes the feed bans are real and enforced.
  Both the USDA and NCBA assumed the Canadian meat and bone meal ban is effective despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary. In a 2004 Canadian Food Inspection Agency study 71 percent of Canadian feed labeled as vegetable-only had animal protein in it. Canadian investigators also revealed that 2,000 head of Canadian cattle may have been exposed to BSE-contaminated feed because the May 2003 Canadian mad cow was rendered and not destroyed. Yes, you read that right. Unbelievably, Canada did not completely destroy the BSE-infected cow. Instead, the mad cow was processed into animal feeds and, according to USDA, those feeds were distributed to as many as 1,800 sites where some of it could have been consumed by Canadian cattle. These are cattle that could be posed to come across the border in early March.
• The USDA should know that feed bans are not universally obeyed because the U.S. Government Accounting Office study in 2002 showed inadequate enforcement and significant noncompliance among feed manufacturers in this country after a similar feed ban was put in place. The agency´s own International Review Team concluded that ". . . the partial ruminant to ruminant feed ban that is currently in place (in the U.S.) is insufficient to prevent exposure of cattle to the BSE agent." Scarier still, over the past 19 months, occasional samples of "vegetable matter only" cattle feed entering the U.S. from Canada have been found to contain animal protein matter. Slaps on the wrist by the FDA have been imposed on the processors, which have included Archer Daniels Midland and Louis Dreyfus.
• The USDA should also be aware that there´s a gap in Canada´s feed ban that is caused by feeding ruminant protein to poultry and then feeding that poultry litter to cattle.
• NCBA´s Jan Lyons contends that, "at least 82 percent of the cattle harvested in the U.S. are less than 30 months old and that CURRENT SCIENCE SAYS THAT BSE DEVELOPS ONLY IN CATTLE OLDER THAN 30 MONTHS." (Emphasis ours) Note to Jan Lyons: There have been more than 20 confirmed cases worldwide of BSE in cattle younger than 30 months of age.
• Going against the best available science, the USDA in their Final Rule to reopen the border, permanently lifted the restriction on Canadian beef from cattle over 30 months of age, effectively allowing the most risky beef into the U.S. food supply. Yet, Canada is unwilling to let U.S. beef from cattle over 30 months of age into their food supply. This despite the fact that all cases of BSE found to date have been in cattle of Canadian origin. Do their scientists know something ours don´t?
• The USDA says that it´s now okay to ship the meat from older animals because Canada is removing specified risk materials from animals older than 30 months of age. The scientists at the World Animal Health Organization say that Canada should be removing SRMs from animals older than six months of age and in the European Union SRM´s are removed from all cattle over 12 months of age.
• The USDA assumed that blood was not at risk to BSE. So why did our government ban the importation of fetal blood serum from Canada?
• Canada continues testing ONLY cattle that already display BSE disease symptoms. R-CALF concludes that, "they are taking no effective steps to use sound, established, scientific BSE testing procedures to prevent BSE cattle from entering the human food system by detecting BSE before the symptoms develop. This is disconcerting because experts agree that BSE can be detected in infected cattle at least three months before the animal exhibits outward signs of the disease. Every other country in the world with a BSE problem is actively testing normal cattle at slaughter," says R-CALF´s Bill Bullard.
• Despite her often stated belief in scientific standards Jan Lyons evidently doesn´t think much of scientific tests. Regarding more BSE testing of cattle less than 30 months old she says, "Testing all cattle would be like testing children for Alzheimer´s disease. It is just not necessary." Clearly Canada has a problem that they don´t want to fully expose by testing more cattle. According to R-CALF, "Canada has conducted fewer than 32,000 BSE tests on its herd since January 2003 while the U.S. has tested about 200,000 cattle since June 2004 without detecting a single case of BSE in the native U.S. cattle herd." You´d think that the country with the problem would be testing a higher percentage of its national herd. Wouldn´t it be nice to find out just how widespread the BSE problem is in Canada before opening the border? But clearly Jan Lyons and the Canadian government think that would be overkill. (Please excuse the poor choice of words.)
• Canadian legislators are rapidly moving towards passing a total ban on all bovine products in all animal feed. Doesn´t this imply that they are attempting to fix something that for years they said was not broken?
• The NCBA´s Jan Lyons says that, "Consumers should remember BSE infectivity is not found in beef such as steaks, roasts and ground beef. It exists in nervous tissue systems such as the spinal cord and brain of older animals."

Hold your horses, Jan. Perhaps the scientists at NCBA headquarters might want to check out new research as documented in Journal Science which shows malformed proteins that cause brain-wasting diseases may be found in more tissues than previously thought.

"I don´t want to provoke hysteria here," said author of the report, Dr. Adriano Aguzzi, "but the bad news is that the prions are likely to distribute in the body more broadly than we would have thought possible."

Researchers from Zurich, the Institute of Neurology in London and Yale School of Medicine injected prions into mice suffering from one of five different conditions causing inflammation in the kidney, pancreas or liver. (Those organs, normally thought to be prion-free, were randomly selected.) They then looked to see if they could detect the misfolded proteins in those organs. They did, in all of the mice.

"Three organs, five different inflammatory conditions — this makes a very tight case," Aguzzi said. (A caveat: The prions used in the experiment were the type that cause scrapie, the brain-wasting disease that afflicts sheep. Scrapie is believed to have jumped the species barrier to cows — triggering BSE.)

A prion expert at the University of Toronto said if the findings are confirmed in cows then current regulations will have to be reconsidered. "If there´s a way for BSE prions to circumvent this barrier to actually propagate in muscle (meat), then we´re in trouble again," said Dr. Neil Cashman.

Dr. Aguzzi stated the obvious: "If sick cows are reliably not entering the human food chain, then there is no reason to worry because of our new findings."

Jan Lyons also stated that "Even if additional cases of BSE are discovered in the United States, scientists agree that BSE is not a public health risk."

Perhaps Jan, you should have said "that some scientists agree while other scientists do not agree." Like those scientists in Japan and Korea. As Leo McDonnell, President of R-CALF says, "What´s interesting is that our border is open to whole muscle cuts from Canada, but we can´t even export to Japan and Korea. (Not even whole muscle cuts.) USDA says their policies are based on sound science, but if the sound science is there, why aren´t we exporting?" Of course, the answer is that despite their pleadings to the contrary, the actions of Canada, Japan, USDA, and NCBA have NOT been based on science. "USDA has based the Final Rule on considerations of relations with the government of Canada and economic impacts of the import ban on ranchers and others in Canada, rather than on protecting the health and choices of U.S. consumers," says McDonnell. In other words, when the USDA and the NCBA say their actions are guided by science they are more than likely referring to political science.

All the recent media attention regarding Mad Cow Disease has raised some interesting questions. Such as...

Mad Cow Disease and been around for 15 years yet animal industries around the globe have used meat and bone meal as a feed ingredient since World War II. Why has BSE waited until now to raise its ugly head?

Britain stopped exporting contaminated cattle feed to other European countries in 1991. So why are cases of Mad Cow springing up now in places like Germany ten years later?

In France the number of infected cows doubled in the last year while in most other EU countries the number of Mad Cows has already peaked and declined. Why?

British scientists and officials respond that BSE and new variant Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease, the human form of the disease, both have long incubation periods and that explains the delayed fuse on the BSE time bomb that has ravaged the cattle business in the European Union. But what if the scientists and bureaucrats are wrong?

They´ve been wrong before you know.

He´s No "Nutter"

There was a time in the not too far distant past when the British government insisted there was no connection between cattle with Mad Cow Disease (BSE) and Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease (CJD). But after much research, politicking, media scrutiny, and arm twisting, British government officials were later forced to admit that it was indeed possible to contract CJD by eating infected beef. So why should we believe these same people now when they were wrong before? Suppose most of everything the scientists have told us about BSE is wrong?

The accepted theory is that Mad Cow Disease is caused by a transmissible protein called a prion (pronounced "pree-on") that makes normal cells mutate, thus creating holes in the brain. It´s a relatively new theory as medicine goes, and we should stress, that´s all it is . . . a theory. The results of the brain-wasting disease are NOT theoretical however. CJD and BSE turn the brain into Swiss cheese and the victim into a vegetable. The disease is slow, untreatable, incurable and ALWAYS fatal. Other than those facts everything else we think we know about the disease, according to one intelligent, courageous organic farmer in England, could prove to be incorrect.

To outdoor sports enthusiasts the name "Purdey" is synonymous with fine shotguns. A descendant of those gun makers has been trying to shoot down conventional wisdom regarding Mad Cow Disease for over sixteen years. Once upon a time in Britain, Mark Purdey was considered a "nutter," a whacko. But not any more, as more and more scientists are beginning to take the man seriously.

BSE was first detected in Britain in 1986. At the time Purdey was an organic dairyman with a 60 head cow herd. Up until that time Mark Purdey was known mostly for refusing government orders to treat his 60 cows with an organophosphate called "Phosmet." Purdey went to court with the Agriculture Ministry of Britain because he and other British organic farmers did not want to be forced to pour a systemic organophosphate, derived from military nerve gas, along the spine of their cattle in the early 1980´s to kill the warble fly.

"Like most things the idea that a chemical was behind the brain wasting disease in cattle and humans was instinct," Purdey was quoted by Reuters. "Being a farmer, I was horrified when I was approached by a ministry official to treat a cow for warble fly by pouring this chemical along the spinal cord and the base of the head. It was an oil designed to seep through the skin and to change the entire internal environment of the cow into a poisonous medium to kill off the parasite."

Circumstantial Evidence

Purdey contends there has never been a confirmed case of Mad Cow Disease among any of the organically raised cattle that were NOT treated with Phosmet in Britain! Even though the organic animals had been fed the same meat and bone meal that was supposed to be the causative agent of BSE. On all the other cattle in thirty UK counties the organophosphate was used, and used heavily. Yes, Phosmet had been used before around the world, including the US, but never at the extremely high dose levels being used in Britain.

To prove his theory that meat and bone meal did not CAUSE Mad Cow Disease, Purdey was forced to become a self-trained scientist. He began by asking simple questions. Questions that had never been satisfactorily answered by existing science. (Keep in mind this was over fifteen years ago).

"At the time meat and bone meal had been sold all over the world," says Purdey. "If you´re blaming this stuff and your sending it all over the world, why aren´t you getting more BSE?" he asked himself. Purdey´s answer: There had to be a missing part of the equation.

Prions, the brain proteins whose mutation seems to be responsible for BSE, protect the brain from the oxidizing properties of chemicals activated by agents such as ultraviolet light. The conclusion that Purdey eventually came to is that prion proteins mutate when they are exposed to too little copper and too much manganese. It just so happens that Phosmet captures copper, making it unavailable for the prions to normally bind to it. Filling copper´s void was manganese. When this happened, according to Purdey, the protein became distorted, lost their function in the brain and presto...Swiss cheese. Furthermore, at the same time that Phosmet was mandatorily being given to British cattle it was also a widespread practice to supplement the cattle with chicken manure, from birds dosed with manganese to increase their egg yields. Thus, the prion proteins in the cow´s brains were being deprived of copper and doubly dosed with manganese at the same time.

The Common Denominator

If true, Purdey´s theory would answer a few troubling questions. Such as...

Why does Britain have the most cases of BSE? Because Phosmet was used almost exclusively there in such large doses.

What causes the brain lesions? Organophosphate have been proven in the lab to be toxic to the brain and capable of causing Mad Cow like lesions on human brains. Purdey disputes the claim that BSE is passed to humans via infected beef. "If it was to do with eating beef we´d have lots of cases in towns where most burger bars are, but 60% of cases are in rural areas." What happens in rural areas that does not take place in cities? "Most victims live by fields where crops are sprayed," says Purdey. And sometimes the fields were sprayed with organophosphates.

To test his theory, Purdey has traveled to the US, Slovakia, Italy and even Iceland to see if he could find a common denominator. He did. What Purdey theorized over a decade ago has now been supported by laboratory tests conducted by David Brown, a neurobiologist at Cambridge University. Late last year his team discovered that when copper was substituted by manganese on prion proteins, the prions adopted precisely the distinguishing features which identify the infective agent in BSE.

When Purdey looked at the distribution in Britain of the human form of the disease he again found a common thread. There were basically two primary clusters of people who had died from BSE, one in Kent in the middle of a fruit and hop growing area where huge quantities of both organic phosphates and manganese-based fungicides were used. The other was an area in Leicestshire, whose dyeworks, Purdey alleges, used to dump residues into the sewage system. The sewage from the dyeworks was then spread over the fields. Manganese was a common ingredient in the dyes and manganese based organophosphates were also sprayed on crops in the area.

As mentioned, Purdey also traveled to the United States. Why here, after all, we have never had a case of BSE? But a similar spongiform disease was first found in deer at Colorado State University in Fort Collins in 1969. Since then the disease has been found among deer and elk up and down the Front Range. (See February Field and Stream for an interesting article). How were the deer catching the BSE-like disease? After all, they were not being fed meat and bone meal.

Purdey found a high level of selenium fallout in the area due to the presence of three cement factories. He also discovered concentrations of selenium in the soil and plants which concentrated it in their leaves and stems, which were then eaten by the deer. Purdey was told that organophosphate pesticides had been commonly sprayed on alfalfa in the area. Farmers said that it had been a common sight to see deer in the alfalfa fields eating the alfalfa after it had been sprayed with organophosphates.

Purdey also found that trout in the region suffer from a similar brain-wasting disease known as "whirling disease." Could it be from digesting too much organophosphate that entered the area´s streams as runoff?

Purdey´s theory is gaining more and more acceptance as illustrated by a November, 2000 article by George Monbiot in the highly regarded Guardian publication. Wrote Monbiot, "The most interesting aspect of France´s BSE scandal is that it makes no sense at all. Britain stopped exporting contaminated cattle feed to Europe in 1991 though we continued sending it to the third world until 1996. In most other EU countries cases have already peaked and declined as expected. But in France the number of infected animals has doubled in the last year. It is impossible to see how this pattern could result from the export of British bone meal."

In France the use of Phosmet first became mandatory in the region known as Brittany. Twenty of the country´s initial 28 cases of BSE emerged there, according to Purdey. BSE´s subsequent spread in France mirrors the use of the use of Phosmet.

"The simple fact is," wrote Monbiot, "that the transmission of BSE has never been satisfactorily explained by the prevailing theory. The consumption of meat and bone meal from infected cows has doubtless had an important role to play. Yet this explanation alone fails to account for the huge numbers of cattle in Britain which continue to become infected after most contaminated feed had been removed from the food chain. The latest research on human form of disease (published in October) failed to find any link with the consumption of infected beef," wrote Monbiot.

Spreading Like Buckshot

It´s hard for the British government, drug or chemical companies to paint Purdey as a numskull when his articles keep ending up in highly respected scientific journals. Purdey wrote five years ago in Med-Hypotheses about the flaws in Britain´s official hypothesis that BSE originated from alterations in the way that cattle feeds were manufactured in the UK. Instead, he proposed that exposure of the bovine embryo to high doses of organophosphates, like Phosmet, was the primary trigger that initiated the deformation of prion proteins and the onset of the BSE epidemic.

All of Purdey´s writings that this editor has read are filled with uncommon common sense. Such as: "If a cow had lead encephalopathy and a human had it too, you wouldn´t think the human had eaten the cow in order to get the disease. You would assume that both human and a cow had eaten lead based paint or some other common source of lead," says Purdey. "If you inject any malformed protein into a healthy animal that will induce a malformed prion. You can inject Alzheimer´s into someone and get the same thing, but no one thinks we´ve eaten something in order to get Alzheimer´s."

Response to Purdey initially was predictable by the men "in bow ties", as Purdey refers to them. The British government attacked his theory, he was misquoted and physically attacked. According to the Guardian, Purdey has been shot at, his phone lines have been cut and his house was burnt to the ground.

"My feeling," wrote Purdey, "is it´s a political game. Animal Health in Edinburgh and the Imperial College School of Medicine at St. Mary´s in London, they´re all really under the British government´s thumb. None of them are independent. Research may be genuine, but the interpretations political. Scientists know that if they go against the government or multinational corporations, they will lose their job or your funding. It´s a terrible situation in the UK." Monbiot agrees: "The ministry of Agriculture for 50 years has enjoyed a dangerously close relationship with the chemical industry, and has repeatedly sought to discredit him (Purdey)."

Purdey thinks the reason is obvious why folks went to such lengths to censure him: "No one is prepared to admit it because it would involve massive compensation. By keeping the casual agent as something mystified, no one is to blame."

Slowly, however, the British government is coming around, even indicating it may help finance Purdey´s research which, until now, has been financed out of his own pocket. But even now the British government is not helping for the right reasons. According to Monbiot, "The families of French victims are threatening to sue the British government, and it desperately needs an alternative transmission theory."

The shot fired by Purdey is now spreading like buckshot. "With funding on its way and new evidence accumulating every month," wrote Monbiot, "a self educated Somerset dairy farmer could be about to overturn the entire body of scientific research on the biggest public health scandal of modern times."

A publisher in a prominent western livestock newspaper suggests that we should not be celebrating R-CALF´s victory to keep the Canadian border closed because of the damage it will do to packers. He says we´re all in this together. In the same boat, so to speak. And when one end of the boat sinks the other will too. He says that the packers and large feeders have the same goals as ranchers, to which we say . . . horse pucky! Their goals could not be more opposite. The packers and their strategically aligned feeders want to buy your cattle as cheap as they can and you, no doubt, want to sell them as high as you can. Do those sound like common goals to you? No, this is a war and the packers were winning, cruising along in their armor plated battleships, while ranchers were paddling upstream against heavy winds in kayaks and canoes.

And then along came a mad cow and R-CALF.

The Packer´s Plan

Corporations, by nature, tend to have lots of meetings. It´s what they do best. And in those meetings they come up with five-,10- and 15-year plans and business models to find ways to reduce input costs, manage volatility, acquire greater control over the supply chain and to be more competitive than their competition. Years ago the business model in the beef business was that cow calf ranchers, stockers, feeders, packers and retailers operated independently of one another in a production system that, for the most part, produced consistent profits for the good operators. But such a system also presented problems for the packer and retailer. For one, because the parts were independent, with little communication between the segments, it also produced cattle that were not consistently good to eat. This coincided with a time in which public consumption of beef plummeted. Granted, there were other factors, significant ones like diet/health issues, but clearly ranchers were not producing a consistently good product. The beef packers looked around and saw an industry that was producing a consistent product and whose consumption was skyrocketing: the poultry industry. So, as businesses often do, they tried to incorporate the chicken model into the beef business through contract production.

Some ranchers signed on with packers in strategic alliances and most cattle publications and industry observers hailed these early ventures as the way of the future. The cattlemen´s national organization, the NCA, was infiltrated by packers and their protégés in order to push such programs. Never once did these folks stop to consider all the power they´d be handing over to the packers if all ranchers became strategically aligned. Gradually the cattle business began to go down the same path as the chicken pluckers and as a result Bill Bullard of R-CALF says here´s what happened:

According to USDA data, Bullard says the average return on investment among cow-calf producers in the U.S. was a negative $30.40 per bred cow per year for each year of the 1990s. "Your industry suffered staggering losses measured in the billions of dollars," says Bullard.

"We lost over 10 percent of the total number of beef cattle operators in the United States. We´ve lost over 108,000 producers since 1993," he said. As a result rural communities all across America have withered. The cow counties in Nebraska are among that state´s poorest, for example.

While the ranchers were facing tough times the packer was enjoying heady days. "In 1998," says Bullard, "the average retail price of beef in the United States was $2.77. In 2002, when cattlemen were getting $10 cwt. less than they did a decade before, retail prices were $3.32 a pound. The retailer certainly benefited from these very favorable economic indicators and the packer did, too. In 1992, the average packer margin was $62 a head. By 2002, that more than doubled to $142 a head."

In 1994 Bullard says the rancher received the majority of the consumer´s beef dollar: 56 cents for every buck the consumer spent on beef. But by 2000, the producer became the minority recipient. "Your share fell to 49 cents," Bullard said. "By 2002 it had fallen to 44 cents." But the packers got greedy and wanted even more so they had more meetings and decided to copy yet another business model.

Beyond Borders

The goal of this new model was to become multi-species, multinational protein providers and this they did through attrition, merger and acquisition. But still the beef part of their beef business did not fall into place like pork and poultry. The reason the chicken model did not work nearly as well in the beef business is that not enough ranchers bought the hype and signed on to become serfs on their own land. And ranchers also had something the poultry pluckers did not have: competitive bidding in the form of auction markets, video markets, country traders and retained ownership. If they were going to take complete control of the beef industry the packers knew they needed another business model. For inspiration they looked to American big businesses who were outsourcing their supply chains to the lowest bidder around the world. If ranchers in Nevada or Nebraska wouldn´t play ball maybe they would in Canada or Argentina. So the packers started looking beyond U.S. borders to other cattle-producing nations for their supply.

According to Bullard, one of the packer´s strategies was be to combine the herds of the United States, Canada and Mexico into one seamless herd. "It´s a good business strategy on the packer´s part," says Bullard. Although the results would not be very good for U.S. ranchers.

To sell meat from several countries to American consumers it was vital that the consumer not be able to tell any difference in the beef produced in this country and that produced in Mexico, Uruguay, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, or any other cattle-producing country. "They want the consumer to believe that all cattle are the same," says Bullard. "It´s not in the interest of a packer to have mandatory country of origin labeling. They want consumers to be loyal to their brand regardless of where they obtained the cattle for use in that product." Country of origin labeling would jeopardize their business model and so the packers tried to kill COOL at every turn.

A packer would also not want the 792,000 beef producers left in the U.S. to have any political power to get in their way. That is why they literally took over the NCBA. What better organization would there be to do there bidding for them than one that for decades had been the one perceived by Congress to represent the cattle industry. Congress put us all in the same boat together. But the NCBA could not do the packer´s bidding if they were dependent on dues from rancher´s for their existence. So the packers and their lackeys commandeered the checkoff funds, created the NCBA and then hijacked the organization and any credibility it had in Congress.

Say what we will, you have to admire their game plan. "That´s a reasonable, justifiable, legitimate business strategy," Bullard said, at least from the packer´s viewpoint. At the same time President Bush was pushing free trade agreements and listening closely to any advice offered by the man who bought the Texas Rangers from him and contributed heavily to his campaign. It just so happens that man and his company also owned Swift of Australia. For awhile this outsourcing of beef from foreign countries was working way better than the chicken model had.

Until a Canadian mad cow reared her ugly head, that is.

That Sucking Sound

Say what you will about Ross Perot, "Big Ears" sure had one thing right: NAFTA did produce a giant sucking sound that sucked away American jobs and dollars. For farmers and ranchers in all the countries affected, NAFTA has not lived up to the hype. But still George Bush, ever the Big Business President, is trying to sign more agreements just like NAFTA. He signed a free trade agreement with Australia that will give them unlimited access to the U.S. beef market in 18 years and he is attempting to push through Congress CAFTA or Central American Free trade Agreement, which would extend NAFTA to six additional countries in Central America: Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. And if CAFTA is passed this summer by Congress, Bush will then turn his attention to FTAA, or Free Trade of the Americas which would create one tariff-free free trade zone from Tierra del Fuego to the top of Canada in which goods and services would flow freely amongst a market of 800 million people.

That is the reason that Bush is pushing so hard to reopen the border to live Canadian cattle despite the health risk to American consumers. He must prove to Central and South American countries that the U.S. lives up to its free trade agreements and that we are a reliable trading partner. If Congress fails to approve CAFTA, the chances for future trade deals, including the Free Trade Area of the Americas appear dismal. "There will be no FTAA if we don´t pass CAFTA," said Mark Smith, director of Western Hemisphere affairs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Our Disappearing Economy

The problem for beef producers is that Bush is signing trade agreements with countries that don´t want our beef but instead want to sell us beef. According to R-CALF, CAFTA countries export $53 million more in beef to the United States than the U.S. sells in the CAFTA countries. And they say those numbers will get more out of balance with the signing of CAFTA. National Farmer´s Union President Dave Frederickson says, "The Central American countries under CAFTA, for example, have a combined population of about 31 million people with limited resources that could be used to purchase agricultural products. The CAFTA, and the U.S. trade agenda as a whole, seems more inclined to negotiate with countries that want increased access to U.S. markets rather than with countries interested in buying more U.S. agricultural products, Meanwhile, we will see a flood of new imports of sugar, fruit, vegetables, ethanol and other commodities." And beef, we might add.

In a press conference Agriculture Secretary Johanns said that CAFTA would benefit U.S. agriculture because it would reduce tariffs on U.S. products exported to those countries and lock those reductions into place. When asked about the potential for beef imports under CAFTA, Johanns quickly switched the topic to sugar.

The U.S. Chamber claims that CAFTA will create 20,000 U.S. jobs in its first year and 100,000 jobs over its first nine years. But we heard those same rosy projections for employment gains after NAFTA yet we have experienced net job losses during the decade of free trade. "We heard the same projections about new jobs and economic gains from NAFTA, and now a decade later we know these were lies," said Lori Wallach, director of Global Trade Watch. "Here´s the same source using the same fraudulent methodology to try to sell us old NAFTA wine in new CAFTA bottles."

The only one these trade agreements benefit are large multinational corporations who can exploit cheaper labor and input costs. The citizens in NAFTA countries have not benefitted: 1.5 million Mexican farmers have lost their livelihoods due to NAFTA and Guatemala had to use their military and police to employ cannons, tear gas, beatings and other tactics to quash demonstrations there against CAFTA.

CAFTA looked like a shoo-in when it was written but its future is now in doubt because Americans are starting to understand that workers, ranchers and citizens have come up on the short-end in trade deals. We are starting to see troubling signs in the "disappearing" U.S. economy and the exploding trade deficit. While Bush says that America´s increasing dependence on imported goods and services is evidence of the strength of the U.S. economy others see it as transferring of our wealth and our children´s future to foreigners who have acquired $3.6 trillion of U.S. assets since 1990 as a result of our trade deficits. What happens when those countries no longer want to assume our debt? Japan has already lost $109.6 billion on their investment in America debt instruments. How much more of that action do you think they want? A study by the Bank of International Settlements concluded that "the ratio of dollar reserves held in Asia declined from 81 percent in the third quarter of 2001 to 67 percent in September 2004. India reduced its dollar holdings from 68 percent of total reserves to 43 percent. China reduced its dollar holdings from 83 percent to 68 percent." That spells trouble ahead for our debtor nation. Perhaps Bush ought to be working more on this social insecurity!

"There is no better example that our trade policy isn´t working than the fact that for the first time in nearly a half-century the U.S. will import more agriculture products than we export," says NFU´s Frederickson. He says CAFTA resembles failed trade policies of the past that further encourage a "race to the bottom" for producers.

When historians look back 30 years from now they will see that the future of the livestock industry was determined in the pivotal year of 2005. The vote on CAFTA and its effect on subsequent trade agreements, the Pickett case, BSE, the Canadian border situation, the Supreme Court´s decision on the checkoff (and the bucks that have empowered the NCBA), all these will decide the future direction of the livestock industry for decades. If ranchers lose these skirmishes and become victims of that giant sucking sound too, we wonder if they´ll see the irony in that they were put out of business by a Texas President who has a ranch and wears a cowboy hat and boots?

In a recent letter to its members the NCBA explained why ranchers have enjoyed good times the past couple years. "Economists around this country agree that the cattle prices we have experienced for many months now, prices that began to climb before the Canadian border closure, is the result of two things: tremendous growth in consumer demand and the cattle cycle. A trade association can do little if nothing to affect the cattle cycle, but when it comes to beef demand it is clear the checkoff-funded efforts, many of which are managed by NCBA, have contributed considerably to increasing demand, which is defined as consumers´ willingness to pay increasing prices even as supplies increase. Again, through the leadership of cattlemen, NCBA is the association that gets it done for you."

For posterity´s sake I´d like to review the milestones in mad cow history to prove a point: That the profitability we´ve been enjoying has been the result of an association´s efforts on your behalf. But it wasn´t the NCBA. We´ve had the checkoff for decades now, why during the past two years did their efforts only begun to kick in? And now with prices falling, why can´t they use some of their magic again?

For the record, prior to the time when mad cows started popping up on this continent prices for cattle weren´t all that great. In the year 2000 the average Omaha fat cattle price was 69.65, the average for 700 to 800 pound feeders was 86.17 and the average utility slaughter cow, according to Cattle Fax, was worth 39.87 per pound. In 2001 the average fat cattle price for the year moved up to 72.40, the feeder was worth 88.20 and the slaughter cow was worth 43.01. All in all, not a bad year. The next year prices slipped. The fat steer went back to 67.04, the feeder market fell all the way back to 80.09 and the lowly slaughter cow was worth 38.65. So much for NCBA´s claim that cattle prices were rising prior to BSE.

Keeping those numbers in mind . . . now we can begin our story.

January 31, 2003 -- This is when the Mad Cow nightmare for North America began . . . only no one knew it at the time. A crossbred black cow from a herd of 192 belonging to a Canadian fish farmer was killed at a meat plant in Alberta. Later she would be called, not so affectionately, COW ZERO. As a base of reference here are the prices for cattle during the month of January before all the mad cow madness began: Omaha fat cattle: 77.18; Omaha feeder cattle: 78.16; Cattle Fax slaughter cows: 37.29.

May 16, 2003 -- Preliminary results were back in Canada and this was the first the public officially heard that there was a mad cow in Canada. Markets drifted lower as cattlemen on both sides of the border waited for confirmation.

May 20, 2003 -- She was just one cow out of 5.5 million head of Canadian cattle but she was like none other to come before her . . . a Canadian Mad Cow. Her coming out party became a day that changed the world . . . both yours and Canadian cattlemen. For you it would bring unprecedented good times. For the Canadian cattlemen it would usher in what one Alberta official called, "The single biggest catastrophe to hit rural Canada since the drouth and the depression of the 1930s."

Canadian cattle prices crashed 70 percent and some Canadian slaughter cows brought two cents per pound. The two million head of Canadian cattle that had been coming south every year were stopped at the border. Omaha fat cattle price for the month: 79.50; Omaha feeder cattle: 82.03; Cattle Fax slaughter cows: 42.00.

August 2003 -- The Bush administration and the NCBA were pushing hard for the Canadian border to be reopened. They got part of their wish when the border was partially opened to Canadian muscle cuts. The tonnage of beef from Canada would break all records in the months ahead as Canada tried to solve her mad cow crises by bundling up her beef in boxes and sending it south. Despite the flood of Canadian beef, cattlemen on this side of the border were reaping the benefits of a closed border. Omaha fat cattle: 84.74; Omaha feeder cattle: 93.34; Slaughter cows: 45.99

October 2003 -- The fastest growing cattlemen´s group in the country, R-CALF, was founded by Leo McDonnell primarily on one issue: that if we weren´t flooded by imports of both beef and cattle from our northern and southern neighbors that we could have a cattle business in this country that was both profitable and sustainable. It took a Canadian mad cow to prove R-CALF´s thesis correct. Once the border was closed cattlemen on this side received the highest prices in history for their stock. In October of 2003 the price of fat cattle averaged 105.50 for the month!

December 23, 2003 -- A day that will not soon be forgotten. It was Christmas week and our present from Santa was our very own mad cow in this country. Albeit by way of Canada. Within three days of the Mabton Mad Cow being found in Washington state the United States lost 90 percent of its beef export market.

In introducing the Mabton Mad Cow at a Friday press conference on December 24 former Ag Secretary Veneman made no mention of the fact that the cow originally came from Canada. When the futures market opened on the following Friday the futures market for all classes of cattle fell. After everyone learned that the Mabton Mad Cow was Canadian the markets recovered as indicated by these average prices for the month of December 2003. Omaha fat cattle: 90.75; Omaha feeder cattle: 101.63; Cattle Fax slaughter cows: 50.32. Note: Our market didn´t crash like Canada´s because ours is mostly a domestic market: we eat what we produce. In Canada they export over half of their production.

May 2004 -- R-CALF wins a preliminary injunction against USDA stopping the border from being opened. They won this first injunction because they were able to prove that the USDA was illegally allowing importation of banned Canadian beef products. The injunction was to remain in effect until the USDA would rewrite and release a new set of rules regarding the importation of live Canadian cattle. Omaha fat cattle: 88.22 Omaha feeder cattle: 104.74 Cattle Fax slaughter cows: 52.34

June 25, 2004 -- This was to be the first of several frustrating days for cattleman as USDA, using their newly formatted testing program, would announce a preliminary positive test result for mad cow, only to later to reveal that the cow in question was free of the disease. The announcement in this, and subsequent episodes always had the effect of driving futures prices significantly lower.

The USDA had discovered a way to lower live cattle prices and used it often but it had no effect whatsoever on the prices packers and retailers were receiving for the beef they sold. As their share of the beef dollar reached the highest point in history, lower cattle prices for ranchers and feeders just meant the profit grew for packers and retailers. This at the same time that Canadian beef packers, which is to say American packers operating on Canadian soil, were buying Canadian cattle at fire sale prices and selling the beef on this side of the border for full markup.

Meanwhile, in spite of the false mad cow alerts Omaha fat cattle were worth 89.19; Omaha feeder cattle: 113.31 and Cattle Fax slaughter cows: 53.92. Note: A month later prices for 700-800 pound feeders steers in this country were quoted at 117.10. Another record. Gee, golly gosh. Thanks NCBA.

December, 2004 -- The USDA released 500 pages of new rules regarding imports from Canada and officially proclaimed the border would reopen to live cattle on March 7, 2005. The market had been working lower in anticipation of this announcement: Omaha fat cattle: 86.60; Omaha feeder cattle: 101.63; Slaughter cows: 51.22

January 2, 2005 -- This reporter was sitting on an auction block in Caldwell, Idaho in the middle of a video sale when I was handed a piece of paper that said Canada had just announced it´s third mad cow. Prices at the video sale immediately spiked. Two weeks later Canada announced their fourth mad cow. Despite what we thought was to be the opening of the border on March 7 prices still remained high. Omaha fat cattle: 88.50; Omaha feeder cattle: 105.00; Cattle Fax slaughter cows: 52.37

March 2, 2005 -- With just five days to go before the USDA was to open the border R-CALF once again won a preliminary injunction to stop the upcoming opening. A Montana judge said that there were food safety and health issues that the USDA had not fully addressed and he did not feel it was prudent to open the border until those issues had a full hearing in his courtroom. Later the judge would set a court date of July 27, 2005 to hear all sides. Judging by Judge Cebull´s language in the injunction R-CALF felt that there was a 50/50 chance that when R-CALF did get their day in court they might also be able to stop the flood of Canadian beef that was coming across the border in boxes. Because slaughter cattle, cow and bull beef were no longer coming across the border the average cow price for the month, according to Cattle Fax, was an amazing 58.25! The year prior to mad cow the average was 37.29.

June 9, 2005 -- Ag Secretary Mike Johanns suggested in a speech about BSE that beef prices were too high. The next day and throughout the weeks to follow he did something about those high prices. At least the prices cattlemen were receiving for their cattle. About the packer´s and retailers profits he did nothing.

June 10, 2005 -- Johanns announced that a cow that had been killed seven months prior had shown weakly reactive results at the time. Samples of tissue were sent to England and it was official. America had its first mad cow. Prices trended a bit lower but the roof did not cave in and within a few days prices had recovered.

July 14, 2005 -- A three judge panel in Seattle issued a 56-page decision explaining its reasoning in overturning the temporary injunction granted by Judge Cebull. The panel said that Judge Cebull had erred in issuing the preliminary injunction that kept the border closed. What was very interesting was that the panel of judges admitted that there were weaknesses in some USDA procedures but still they took it upon themselves to lift the injunction and reopen the border. The USDA had not even asked the panel to do this.

July 18, 2005 -- Trucks loaded with Canadian cattle were already rolling into the U.S. On the same day, October feeder cattle closed $2/cwt lower. On this day packers were bidding $77 and $78 and some weren´t bidding at all. The negative effect of this decision was already apparent. Limiting the exodus somewhat was the permit process and the fact that many Canadian truckers had either parked their trucks, quit or are hauling something else. But it did not take long to gear up as 123 permits for export were written up in the first few days.

Meanwhile we learned that Judge Cebull had postponed R-CALF´s date in his courtroom to hear the entire case against the USDA. Some observers said it was postponed because Cebull saw that now that America had its very own mad cow that much of R-CALF´s case was now meaningless. Some predicted that Cebull would just dismiss the case and let the border remain open. R-CALF maintained that the Cebull was just waiting to see if the panel of judges in Seattle would grant intervener status to the National Meat Association, Canadian Cattlemen´s Association and the Alberta Beef producers. (The panel of judges did not grant them such status.)

Both sides have filed for summary judgment and the Judge could rule on the case without a trial or the postponed trial may go on after all.

Unfortunately for Canadian cattleman, the border opened just in time for them to participate in a price wreck in live cattle caused by the border reopening. Which is probably what the packers had in mind the entire time.

So here´s where we stand: America is now accepting live cattle no other country in the world will accept and our Asian export markets remain closed. The meat packers Union in Canada is threatening to strike Tyson, which kills 40 percent of Canada´s fed cattle. Cattle on-feed numbers in Alberta and Saskatchewan are up 15 percent over year ago levels and in September many cattle will come out of a Canadian government set-aside program and will be for sale. American ranchers selling on the Fall market will then have their prices lowered by a glut of Canadian cattle that were subsidized. Fat cattle are now back down to 78 (near where they were before the mad cow madness began), feeder cattle that were fetching 1.13 before the border reopened are bringing 1.02 to 1.04 and trending lower. And all these lower prices brought to you by President Bush, three liberal judges, meat packers, the NCBA, American Farm Bureau Federation, National Pork Producers Council and 29 State Cattlemen´s Associations.

Meanwhile slaughter cows are still at record prices. As I write this they are 52 percent higher than they were when Canada announced their first mad cow. There is a very simple explanation for this and it has absolutely nothing to do with the NCBA´s beef promotion efforts: The border is closed to Canadian cow beef. Canada can´t send slaughter cows down here, nor their meat. End of argument. (In the coming year look for the USDA to try to lift the ban on dairy springers and then slaughter cows.)

We apologize for all the numbers in this story but they were necessary to show you the possibilities of the good times we could enjoy if President Bush and the NCBA weren´t busy signing away your future with more "free trade" agreements. (As I write this CAFTA just passed with NCBA´s ringing endorsement.) We also wanted to prove that you really do owe the last couple good years to a real cattlemen´s organization: R-CALF. If you´ll recall, it was founded on the idea that we could be profitable if imports could be controlled. The R-CALF founders were prophets. Or maybe we should spell that PROFITS . . . because you may have just seen your last of those for awhile.

You have to be a full-blown optimist to have detected any good news in the announcement of this country´s third mad cow in Alabama. But the good news was there, buried deep inside the New York Times instead of on the front page. In most metropolitan daily newspapers you had to really be looking hard to find the news blurb about the most recent bovine to join the mad cow fraternity. And those consumers that did read the story seemed to have taken little notice and went right back to eating their burgers and steaks. The good news is that mad cow is old news.

At the same time the mad cow in Alabama was being dug up and her existence was being buried in newspapers, there was some really good news to report about those mad cows that have made a mess of our business these past few years. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization announced that the number of mad cows is declining significantly around the world. FAO said that cases of BSE worldwide have been dropping at the rate of 50 percent per year during the past three years and that in 2005, just 474 animals died of the disease, compared with 878 in 2004 and 1,646 in 2003. That is down from tens of thousands of cases a little over a decade ago. Even better news, only five human deaths in 2005 resulted from Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the human form of BSE. Five deaths (all in the United Kingdom) are still five too many but that compares favorably with nine deaths in 2004 and 18 in 2003.

Extrapolate those numbers out and you can see that we will soon put all this madness behind us. As an older generation of cows that ate feed containing meat meal dies off we should be able soon to say goodbye to mad cows once and for all. That is of course, if people are obeying the feed ban. (It is important to note that our third mad cow was ten years old, meaning she almost definitely got the disease from eating tainted feed before the ban.) But just as we seem to be getting a handle on BSE another deadly disease is about to take its place. In fact, on the day most major newspapers buried our third mad cow inside their news sections on the front page they carried stories about another disease carried by non-humans: bird flu.

You could say that BIRD FLU is the next MAD COW.

For All The Wrong Reasons

One would think that cattlemen would have little to fear from avian influenza. After all, it affects poultry, not cattle. A black-hearted person might even relish the thought that poultry producers may be about to experience similar discomfort to what cattlemen have gone through these past few years. And who knows, an epidemic of bird flu in this country might even be good for cattle prices by decreasing demand for poultry. All this assumes, of course, that we have our own chicken coop in order.

Sadly we don´t, for ours is still filled with chicken poop.

This may come as a surprise to you but the cattle industry is STILL feeding poultry litter to cattle. Even knowledgeable cattlemen these days are surprised to learn that cattle are still eating poultry fecal matter. They had assumed, like most everyone else, that we had stopped the practice back in 2004 when then former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary, Tommy Thompson, said that the FDA would prohibit the use of chicken pen litter in cattle feed. End of story.

Except that it did not happen!

A day after the Alabama mad cow was confirmed Senator Tom Harkin from Iowa again called for an end of the use of poultry excrement as cattle feed. To his credit Tom Harkin wants poultry poop eliminated as a cattle feed, even if it is for the wrong reason. Harkin thinks there is a "small risk" that poultry litter could somehow spread BSE. Stephen Sundlof, the director of the FDA´s Center for Veterinary Medicine says, "You can never say the risk is absolutely zero. Yes it is possible, but the probability of that occurring is very, very remote." But even if it´s for all the wrong reasons, Harkin is right that the feeding of poultry litter should be stopped.

Guilt By Association

Southern cattle producers still feed chicken litter to cattle as a cheap source of protein but there is an even more compelling reason why chicken litter is fed to cattle: poultry farmers have no other place to put it! Few other economical and environmentally viable options exist for getting rid of the mountainous mounds created in this nation´s vast chicken houses. The FDA doesn´t seem to be able to ban the practice because the FDA sees no other environmentally sound way to get rid of the stuff. Says Sundlof, "adding chicken litter to cattle feed is one of the primary methods of waste disposal for the chicken growers."

But that doesn´t make it a good reason to feed the stuff to cattle!

How ironic that cattle have helped factory-farm chicken producers solve one of their biggest problems and in the process vault over beef as America´s favorite protein. Had cattle not acted like bovine garbage disposals those mountains of manure would have served as roadblocks to poultry´s advance. Chicken pluckers might not be crowing quite so loudly today if cows hadn´t cleaned up their mess.

No, the feeding of poultry waste to cattle should not be stopped in this country because it might spread BSE. There is a far more compelling reason to ban the practice. If poultry producers are about to get hit with all the bad press that avian flu will bring why should cattle producers risk being found guilty by association?

Coming Soon To A Chicken Ranch Near You

What is now known as bird flu was first detected way back in 1878, but the strain of the flu that the world is worried about today, the deadly H5N1 strain, first appeared in Scotland in 1959. Birds that were struck with the fatal illness passed the disease to other birds through direct contact and through through their fecal matter. Somehow, probably through migratory birds, the virus that arose in Scotland found its way to China and Southeast Asia where H5N1 has been simmering for more than a decade. You probably first heard of bird flu in 1997 when the deadly strain hit Hong Kong, infecting 18 people and killing six. In an effort to stop the deadly virus the Hong Kong government immediately ordered the killing of all 1.6 million chickens, ducks, quail, partridges and geese in the general vicinity. The slaughter of all this poultry did slow the deadly strain down but health officials were overly optimistic in thinking they had stopped it. Just four years later the deadly virus popped up again in Thailand and Vietnam. Once again those governments killed millions of birds in an effort to stop the spread of the disease. Meanwhile the sale and consumption of chicken plummeted in the affected regions.

From what we now know, migratory birds from western China then spread the deadly strain to Europe and Africa. Even though you may already be tired of hearing about bird flu, the disastrous effects of the disease, especially in Africa, cannot be overstated. In many African countries a family´s wealth is measured by the number of poultry they possess. When told that their birds had to be destroyed many villagers smuggled their birds out to sell to neighboring villagers. And thus the disease spread to Africa, Russia, the Middle East, and Europe, where the reaction has been especially panicky. And who can blame the Europeans? They are still reeling from mad cow disease and now they get hit with another food scare.

Avian influenza has spread in just the past couple months to 30 additional countries. Eleven European Union countries have already reported at least one suspected or confirmed case and the deadly Asian strain of avian influenza H5N1 is expected to arrive in the United States sometime this year when migrating wild birds bring it with them when they return to their summer breeding grounds. U.S. government officials have promised to test 100,000 wild birds this year in Alaska and the Pacific Coast flyway, which is where they believe the bird flu will first enter this country. Bush administration officials are trying to allay fears by convincing the public that the feds know it´s coming and are ready for it. But scientists secretly admit that there is nothing that can be done to stop the spread of H5N1. These same scientists once thought that killing millions of chickens and ducks would contain or even eradicate the virus but now their only hope is to kill enough time so that human vaccines can be developed. If they lose this race with time the deadly virus could cause a pandemic around the world that would make mad cow disease seem like a chest cold.

 Mad Cows And Sick Birds

There are eerie similarities and dramatic differences between mad cows and birds with the flu. Whereas mad cow has infected thousands of cows, BSE has only resulted in some 150 deaths total, over more than a ten-year period and almost all of those fatalities have been in the U.K. Already there have been 186 human cases of avian flu with 105 deaths just in the last three years, according to the World Health Organization. More than a quarter of those deaths, 29, have occurred this year. BSE is winding down while avian flu is just getting started with far greater potential for disaster.

Like mad cow disease, H5N1 is rarely transmitted to humans and also like BSE, bird flu cannot be contracted by eating the meat if it is cooked properly. According to the World Health Organization, "There is no epidemiological evidence that people have become infected after eating contaminated poultry meat that has been properly cooked." Unlike BSE where people get the disease by ingesting dangerous malformed prions, people can get bird flu with close contact with sick or dead birds.

At the moment the USDA is planning to decrease its mad cow testing, indicating that we have come nearly to the end of mad cow´s life cycle. But while the USDA will will not permit Creekstone, Harris and others to BSE test cattle for export to Japan, the chicken industry has vowed to test all domestic flocks for avian flu before sending them to the supermarket. The two industry strategies could not be more different. Those poultry flocks infected with some strains of bird flu will be entirely eliminated, and considering the size of factory farms today the implications could be substantial. Clearly the poultry industry could be far more severely affected with H5N1 than the beef industry has been with mad cow. And really, there is no reason whatsoever for the beef industry to get sick over bird flu. EXCEPT . . . there is that poultry litter!

We should stress that scientists have not found that the use of poultry litter as a food source for cattle can spread avian influenza.

Having said that, many scientists fear that the deadly bird flu virus will mutate into a form that is more easily transmitted among people and for which the human body has no immunity or antibodies. According to the Los Angeles Times, scientists have recently found that avian influenza has infected domestic cats and a stone marten in Germany, increasing concerns over its ability to cross into mammals. Experts fear the virus will mutate into a form that passes easily from person to person, or from bird to mammal to person, thereby sparking a pandemic in which millions could die. In view of all this, doesn´t it seem like the prudent thing to do would be for the cattle industry to ban the feeding of poultry litter to cattle?

In reality, the scientific community doesn´t know what to expect from bird flu, just like they didn´t know what to expect from BSE. Now would be a good time, before H5N1 has reached our shores and before consumers start thinking to strongly about bird flu, to remove any factors that may cause consumers not to buy our product. Bird flu is clearly not a burden the cattle industry must bear, unless that is, amidst a bird flu epidemic the public discovers that poultry litter is still being fed to cattle.

Others seem to be taking the threat far more seriously. Canada and Europe have already banned feeding poultry feces to cattle. Our own federal regulators have already banned the poultry industry from using two groups of human antiviral drugs to treat their flocks for fear that may reduce their effectiveness in humans. China used one of the drugs last year to treat flocks which caused resistance to the drug strain. The U.S. has been stockpiling drugs for a possible avian-flu outbreak in humans. They are taking precautionary measures. Shouldn´t the beef industry do the same?

Senator Tom Harkin, has called on the USDA and FDA to ban poultry litter from cattle feed when FDA revises its feed ban rules later this year. Those proposed revisions are scheduled to be released July 1. It will be the first tightening of the rules since the FDA barred feeding meat meal to cows in 1997. We should take this rare opportunity to tighten those restrictions further by stopping the use of poultry litter as cow feed, just as Tommy Thompson promised back in 2004. (While we are at it we should also ban the use of blood and restaurant leftovers for cattle feed.)

Southern poultry/cattle producers will flop around like a chicken with its head cut off if they are forced to find other disposal methods for their litter. But if you still doubt that we should ban the practice try this little experiment: Next time you sit down with some urban friends to enjoy a nice steak tell them that the beef may have come from an animal that was fed chicken poop as part of its diet.

By eliminating poultry litter as a food source for cattle we will be insuring the good health of the beef industry at a time when our competitors could be feeling the ill effects of bird flu.