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By Greg McCune
CHICAGO
(Reuters) - Americans are suddenly waking up to the threat
the deadly mad cow disease ravaging Europe could pose to
an icon of their culture -- the hamburger.
This
is, after all, the land of meat-eaters in search of a fast-food
fix at a McDonald's restaurant, the land of the cowboy and
of a president, George W. Bush, who retreats to his Texas
cattle ranch to get away from it all.
While
the triumph of vegetarians has long been predicted, Americans
still are among the world's leading carnivores, each eating
nearly 100 pounds (45 kg) of beef and veal a year. Beef
was expected to feature prominently on the menu of many
parties celebrating the leading American sporting event
of the year, the professional football championship "Super
Bowl" on Sunday.
Until
recently, the alarming spread of the brain-destroying illness
known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), from Britain
to several continental European countries -- and the scare
that has turned Europeans off beef en masse -- had barely
registered on the American radar screen.
No case
of mad cow disease has ever been found in the United States
and government and industry officials have repeatedly pledged
to keep it that way. British officials at first denied the
disease could spread to humans but have since admitted it
could when more than 80 people died of a human version called
new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease after eating infected
beef. Three people have died in France.
Just
a whiff of trouble over mad cow disease on this side of
the Atlantic was enough last week to send a shudder through
U.S. agribusiness and some markets. Cattle futures prices
and the shares of McDonald's fell on Thursday after the
Food and Drug Administration announced it had quarantined
some cattle in Texas on suspicion they had been fed rations
containing cattle parts in violation of rules to prevent
mad cow disease.
There
was no suggestion that the cattle actually had contracted
the disease, only that they had been fed the wrong rations.
A leading producer of animal feed, Purina Mills Inc., admitted
on Friday that it had produced the feed containing meat
and bone meal from ruminant animals, and said it halted
the use of such meat and bone meal in all its feed.
Scientists
believe one way mad cow disease can be transmitted is through
a cannibal-like feeding to cattle of ground up parts of
other cattle or ruminants, a practice the U.S. has banned
since 1997.
OUTBREAK
WOULD BE A CALAMITY
"I
can't imagine what would happen if ever we had a suspected
case here in the U.S.," said Chuck Levitt, senior livestock
analyst for Alaron Trading Corp in Chicago. "What a
calamity that would be for the industry."
The
U.S. cattle herd is nearly 100 million animals, the single
largest segment of U.S. agriculture. The production of grain-fed
beef in the United States is among the most intensive in
the world with massive feedlots containing thousands of
cattle in close quarters.
Some
of the feedlots are so large that visitors to the towns
on the plains of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska where
most are located, can smell the distinctive manure from
miles away depending on the direction of the wind.
In Europe,
intensive agriculture has come under attack as helping to
spread mad cow disease.
Food
safety advocates said the Texas quarantine has highlighted
loopholes in U.S. efforts to prevent mad cow disease. They
are skeptical of government and industry assurances that
the disease could never happen here, citing the failure
of similar food pledges in the past.
Last
summer, after repeated U.S. government and industry assurances
that the use of gene-modified grain in U.S. foods was not
a problem, a significant scare erupted over a gene-altered
corn variety not approved for human consumption because
it was suspected of causing allergies.
The
discovery of the unapproved corn variety, Starlink, in dozens
of foods such as taco shells prompted a massive food recall
and caused major disruption to the U.S. domestic and international
grain marketing system.
ARE
AMERICANS SAFE FROM MAD COW?
In the
last two weeks, U.S. media have begun to highlight the mad
cow scare in Europe with prominent stories in newspapers
and on television, including a feature on ABC TV's leading
evening news program that asked: "Are Americans Safe
From Mad Cow?"
The
answer to that question, according to government and industry,
is yes. But food safety advocates are not so sure.
"The
government agencies say they have erected this firewall
(against mad cow). We don't have a firewall. It's more like
a white picket fence," said Michael Hansen, a research
associate with the Consumers Union in Washington.
The
United States has not imported any meat or bone meal from
Britain for a decade, which U.S. officials said was an important
move to prevent the disease crossing the Atlantic. It also
has banned imports of meat from Europe.
But
critics such as Hansen said the possibility exists of a
home-grown variety of mad cow disease.
At least
two maladies of the same general family as mad cow are present
in the United States -- scrapie in sheep, and chronic wasting
disease in some wild deer and elk.
Furthermore,
the FDA has said that the rules banning the feeding of ruminant
meat and bone meal to cattle have been flouted. The cattle
industry has called for a "zero tolerance" policy
to get producers of feed to comply with the rules.
The
National Cattlemen's Beef Association has called an emergency
meeting for Monday in Washington of feed industry and government
officials to underscore the need for vigilance.
"If
there are folks that don't understand the seriousness of
the situation, they need to be brought to understand that,"
the organization's chief executive Charles Schroeder told
Reuters in a recent interview.
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