Friends of Rural New York

Newsday writer, Sylvia Carter, switches to grass fed meat.

Let me say it plainly. This whole mad cow thing has gone far enough.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture keeps saying the United States has the safest beef supply in the world, but last month, a long seven months after material from the brain of a suspect Texas cow first tested positive for mad cow, the public learned that the cow did, indeed, have bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the scientific name for mad cow disease. That was seven months too long.

After the first test, the cow’s tissue had been rechecked using what the USDA called the “gold standard test,” and that indicated no disease. The USDA claimed the earlier, positive test had been “experimental.”

But in June, a third and more sensitive test, conducted in Weybridge, England, finally confirmed without doubt that the cow had BSE.

Maybe you missed this news. Many newspapers buried it or did not even run a first-day story. To their credit, newspapers such as the Des Moines Register and the Los Angeles Times, in states where there are lots of cattle, did let their readers know about the “mad cow.”

The finding was significant, because this was the first confirmed case of the disease in an animal born and bred in the United States. This time, there was no blaming Canada.

The USDA maintains, however, that there are no proven human cases of illness as a result of people consuming meat from cattle that had BSE.

Maybe that’s true, but why take any chances? Why not test every cow, as Japan does? How gullible we, the public, must seem to the authorities. Only about 1 percent of the cows that are slaughtered are tested, so how would the USDA know? Reassurances ring hollow.

Remember some other things the government has told us? The Food and Drug Administration approved Vioxx as safe, and our government once insisted that Agent Orange was nothing to worry about. Neither turned out to be true. Already, we know that the USDA’s supposed “gold standard” test for mad cow may have been standard but was far from golden. Only last month did the USDA finally bow to pressure, mostly from Consumers Union, for a third test. That one gave the positive confirmation.

As the Los Angeles Times said in an editorial earlier this month, “The more federal officials downplay mad cow disease, the scarier things get.”

The 12-year-old cow in this case, a “downer” (one that couldn’t walk), showed up in November at a Texas slaughterhouse, dead on arrival. It was left for use as pet food; downer cattle are not butchered for human consumption.

That’s good, so far as it goes, but there is no proof that downer cattle are the only cattle likely to have the disease.

In the wake of this case, the feds have agreed to use the most accurate and sensitive Western Blot Test along with the so-called gold standard immunohistochemistry test when confirming a suspect case. That is good, too.

There is a ban on feeding of beef and its byproducts directly to cattle. That, too, is good, because it prevents possible animal material that carries mad cow disease from being recycled. But such byproducts still can be put into feed given to pigs and chickens, and waste left after butchering chickens, including leftover poultry feed containing cattle meal, can be fed to cattle.

Hello. If we are what we eat, so are animals. And we eat them. You see where this line of reasoning is going, don’t you? As someone who grew up on a farm, I know that 50 years ago, farmers would have been as likely to feed such things to cattle as they would have been to fly to the moon.

Cattle’s natural food is grass; in winter, it’s hay, often combined with corn and other grain, but never with other animals.

There is only one explanation for feeding animal parts to animals: greed. After all, so corporate-farm thinking goes, if you can take something that had no value and turn it into animal feed, you are ahead of the game.

There is no excuse, either, for the government’s secrecy. At first, they hushed up news of November’s positive test. Then, last month, when we learned the truth, they refused to say where the cow had lived. In CounterPunch, an online, liberal-leaning political newsletter, John Stauber asked on June 29 in an open letter to Agriculture Secretary Michael Johanns if there was any truth to the rumor that the USDA would “soon print a photo of U.S. mad cow #2 [’Cow Jane Doe’] onto the side panel of milk cartons? ... Are you hoping that some member of the milk-drinking or cow-milking public will recognize her image on a carton and call you?”

As the L.A. Times said, “the Bush administration has been dragged ... into every protective step.” Example: Two years ago then-Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman announced plans for a national system to track animals coming to the nation’s feed lots. It never happened.

Some time ago, I began to feel queasy about eating beef that received dubious feed. I sought sources of grass-fed beef or organic meat. Now, my freezer holds pork and lamb from Valley Farmers upstate, and beef short ribs from Amish farmers in Pennsylvania. All the animals were grass-fed and never ate junk. Sometimes, I saw the pastures where the animals grazed, and the bales of sweet-smelling hay that would become their winter meals.

I buy milk directly from farmers, too, and it comes from pastured cows. I buy eggs from farms where hens roam about eating juicy insects and other natural food. I took a share in an organic farm, which supplies me with vegetables all summer. I’m almost liberated from the supermarket. With a farmer and a handshake, I can establish a trust that is lacking with a government that prefers to keep me and every consumer in the dark.

Others are like-minded. Sales of organic milk, for example, are soaring so fast that the supply can hardly keep pace.

Whether you want to go to the trouble of finding alternative meat sources (it’s not too hard; just Google “grass-fed"), you can join in demanding that the government take these actions:

Require that all cattle more than 20 months old be tested at slaughter for mad cow. Even test animals that seem healthy.

Ban animal feed ingredients that may transmit mad cow, closing loopholes in rules that now allow feeding of bone meal, cow’s blood and chicken coop floor waste to livestock.

Enforce the proposed tracking system.

Allow cattle farmers who want to test all their cattle to do so; the USDA has barred Creekstone Farms, a Kansas meat packer, from such testing on the rather dubious basis that testing of younger cattle is unwarranted. Testing of all animals would have enabled the packer to market its meat in Japan.

To lower risks, you also can buy ground meat that a butcher grinds in front of you, so you know it came from a larger cut and thus contains no material from the spine, brain or central nervous system, which have the highest risk of infection. Avoid processed beef products, such as sausages and hot dogs, that are made using machines that scour a cow carcass for all available meat of any kind.

Or go the grass-fed route. I patronize Valley Farmers, a cooperative near Millbrook, N.Y. Visit http://www.valleyfarmers .com or call 845-868-1826.

Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.