Russia: Mad Cow in your freezer

December 28, 2003

Saturday, 27 December 2003 6:42

Russia: " Mad Cow " in your freezer

Pravda.RU:World:More in detail

10:32 2003-12-26

" Mad Cow " in Your Freezer

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says it is convinced that a

Washington state dairy cow had mad cow disease after British scientists

reviewed USDA tests on the slaughtered animal and have concluded those tests

have been interpreted correctly, reports Reuters

United States inspectors have tested fewer than 30,000 of the roughly

300 million animals slaughtered in the last nine years, and they get results

days or weeks later, informs New York Times.

According to Reuters, a Holstein cow slaughtered on December 9 in a

tiny town in Washington State was the first animal that tested positive for

mad cow disease in the United States, sending shock waves through the $27

billion U.S. cattle industry and shutting down American beef sales to major

foreign buyers.

American beef is still " extremely safe, " said Dr. Daniel L. Engeljohn,

a policy analysis official in the Food Safety and Inspection Service in the

Agriculture Department, but the discovery of the disease " will spur the U.S.

to look at the preventive measures it's had in place for the last decade. "

Mad cow, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is a brain-wasting

disease thought to be transmitted from animal feed containing bovine brains

or spinal cord. The United States bans the use of those materials in feed.

Great Britain has already been through the mad cow crisis. Washington

Post reports that Britain's crisis over mad cow disease stretched from 1986

to the end of the 1990s. It still has repercussions today in the British

public's tendency to veer from one health scare to the next, regardless of

official assurances.

Andy Hemmendinger, 45, who lives in a suburb of Washington, said he

would now " probably wait a little bit " before buying beef in a restaurant,

" just to see what they find, " reports Reuters

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