Mad Cow Fact Sheet

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Mad Cow Fact SheetFor years Germany asserted it had no mad cow disease inside its borders.Only when independent rapid testing companies were invited in - against thewishes of the government - was it suddenly discovered that Germany had avery significant mad cow disease problem.The U.S. is currently in the same position as Germany was a year ago - don'tlook, don't find.Mad cow disease experts believe that it is important to test "downedcattle" - what the industry labels sick animals that have trouble walking tothe slaughterhouses because of neurological problems or other illnesses thatmake them want to lie down.Out of an estimated 36 million cattle slaughtered in the U.S. each year,about 190,000 are downed cattle, according to Thomas Gomez, a veterinaryepidemiologist with the US Department of Agriculture.The US tested only about 2,000 cattle in 2001, out of the 36 millionslaughtered, which experts say is far too small to detect mad cow if it werehere. While the US doubled that number to around 4,000 during 2002, manyexperts still believe the sample is far too small.Michael Hansen, a microbiologist with the nonprofit Consumers Union inYonkers, N.Y., said the increased search for mad cow cases in the UnitedStates still won't produce a large enough sample to find the disease if itis lurking undetected. The disease takes several years to develop in cattleand can't yet be detected without examining the animal's brain.While the U.S. currently tests one cow out of about 20,000 slaughtered,Germany tests one out of every three cows going to market - and Japan istesting every cow it slaughters before releasing meat for sale.A downer cow -- one of nearly 200,000each year the U.S. won't testFirst detected in England in 1986, the disease was recently detected in cowsborn and raised in the Czech Republic and Japan, marking the first time thedisease has been confirmed outside of Western Europe. Hansen said there's nobiological reason the disease couldn't have come here before 1989, when theU.S. government banned imports of sheep and cattle from countries reportingdisease outbreaks."When you have a disease that has this long an incubation period, you areasking for trouble if you don't test thoroughly," Hansen said.Brain-wasting diseases have already been detected in mink raised on downedcattle meat in the United States, suggesting the agent could already bepresent but undetected.There are also cases of wasting diseases in deer and elk first discovered inColorado that have spread into neighboring states and the province ofSaskatchewan. The government is now confiscating and killing deer and elk ongame farms in the Western U.S. because of an alarming increase of this brainwasting disease