Compounding USDA's lax practices has been its refusal to allow beef processors to independently test cattle for mad cow disease. In 2004, Creekstone Farms, a Kansas processor of black Angus beef with a large Japanese clientele, asked for permission to test its 300,000 cattle for BSE using a $500,000 testing site it had built to USDA specifications.
But the agency ruled that the BSE test was licensed only for "surveillance" of animal health, and rejected Creekstone's request because it implied "a consumer safety aspect" that was "not scientifically warranted."
This is an incomplete description of the USDA's rationale. Although I agree that there shouldn't be a ban on private testing, the USDA's position is that BSE testing is ineffective at the time most cows are slaughtered, and would therefore provide an unwarranted impression of safety.
> NOT A FOOD SAFETY TEST
> BSE tests are not conducted on cuts of meat, but involve taking samples from the brain of a dead animal to see if the infectious agent is present. We know that the earliest point at which current tests can accurately detect BSE is 2-to-3 months before the animal begins to show symptoms. The time between initial infection and the appearance of symptoms is about 5 years. Since most cattle that go to slaughter in the United States are both young and clinically normal, testing all slaughter cattle for BSE might offer misleading assurances of safety to the public.
> ...
> Why doesn't USDA test every animal at slaughter?
> There is currently no test to detect the disease in a live animal. BSE is confirmed by taking samples from the brain of an animal and testing to see if the infectious agent - the abnormal form of the prion protein - is present. The earliest point at which current tests can accurately detect BSE is 2 to 3 months before the animal begins to show symptoms, and the time between initial infection and the appearance of symptoms is about 5 years. Therefore, there is a long period of time during which current tests would not be able to detect the disease in an infected animal.
> Since most cattle are slaughtered in the United States at a young age, they are in that period where tests would not be able to detect the disease if present. Testing all slaughter cattle for BSE could produce an exceedingly high rate of false negative test results and offer misleading assurances of the presence or absence of disease.
> Simply put, the most effective way to detect BSE is not to test all animals, which could lead to false security, but to test those animals most likely to have the disease, which is the basis of USDA's current program.
The rational middle ground would be to allow the private testing, but regulate any advertising or marketing of the testing and/or results on the basis it would likely confuse the consumers. If the interest in private testing magically disappears, then the intent is clear and might be a valuable factor for the consumers who might reasonably conclude the private company only had interest in performing testing they knew or should have known was immaterial for the purposes of marketing the testing to consumers as though it were material.
It's unclear whether or not that's actually prohibited. It looks like Creekstone was the only beef processor who desired to test for BSE, and this was based on them wanting to export their beef to Japan. The rejection was made on this basis.
This is the same error the CDC & FDA made in the early stages of COVID, insisting on fussy rationed tests based on hand-wavy ideas about public misinterpretation. That error likely contributed to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths by hiding initial community spread for a month or more.
Mass testing, even testing that's mostly at a stage unlikely to detect anything, and only occasionally on less-typical older animals, will provide new useful info. Waiting to test until an a old symptomatic cow "most likely to have the disease" shows up is closing the barn door after the mad cows have already escaped.
The USDA's logic is dangerous like the bureaucratic rationing of COVID tests, early on. At crucial times in early 2020, no matter how suspicious a case/death, and how well it fit COVID symptoms, if the patient hadn't returned from Wuhan in the last few weeks, a test was prohibited. That's a "we don't want to know" policy.
> Mass testing, even testing that's mostly at a stage unlikely to detect anything, and only occasionally on less-typical older animals, will provide new useful info.
What useful information does it provide? Is there any evidence that testing can detect BSE before symptoms appear? Japan had tested clinically healthy cows until 2017, when they decided to limit testing to symptomatic cows.[0]
> Waiting to test until an a old symptomatic cow "most likely to have the disease" shows up is closing the barn door after the mad cows have already escaped.
Obviously it would be ideal to detect BSE in cows that are younger and not yet symptomatic. But if there's no evidence that this can be done, testing provides a false assurance of safety. Testing older, symptomatic cows will at least give an estimate as to the prevalence of BSE and an indication as to whether safety measures are working.
It's much ado about nothing, anyway, since the US has only ever had four cases of vJCD from BSE, and in each case the individual had spent large amounts of time in countries known for having tainted beef. Perhaps dementia cases are misdiagnosed, but if there were a large danger of BSE/vCJD, one would expect to see those symptoms in a great deal of younger people.
As your quote noted, most cows are slaughtered earlier, so generations could be infected without any detection. If you only test 5yo symptomatic cows, you can never find an outbreak until it's too late, or anything that contradicts the breezy reassurances of the industry-captured USDA.
Again, it's like when the CDC & Fauci were assuring people that there was no significant community COVID spread, when they were also blocking any testing that could detect such spread, by limiting tests only to those that fit their preconceived notion ("only recent returnees from Wuhan").
How much, if any, random surveillance of older asymptomatic cows happens that gives you such confidence in the current testing?
How many meat cows live long enough to get a good read on the symptomatic rate?
Are you sure early mild symptoms of ill health might not just get a cow culled before enough symptoms-to-test arrive, by ranchers who, like the USDA, "would rather not know"?
Your last paragraph seems to reduce to, "we'll know if there's a lot of it, if and when there are a lot of young people with suspicious BSE".
We should aspire to use something other than our young people for early detection. Or at least not block those who want to try it.
> As your quote noted, most cows are slaughtered earlier, so generations could be infected without any detection.
They couldn't be detected by those tests anyway if they don't have symptoms, or at least not until shortly before symptoms become apparent.
> Again, it's like when the CDC & Fauci were assuring people that there was no significant community COVID spread when they were also blocking any testing that could detect such spread, by limiting tests only to those that fit their preconceived notion ("only recent returnees from Wuhan").
There are a number of differences here. Most importantly COVID tests can detect if you have COVID even when asymptomatic, but BSE tests cannot detect BSE before it is symptomatic.
> How much, if any, random surveillance of older asymptomatic cows happens that gives you such confidence in the current testing? How many meat cows live long enough to get a good read? Are you sure mild symptoms of ill health might not just get them culled before enough symptoms-to-test by ranchers who, like the USDA, "would rather not know"?
> Your last paragraph seems to reduce to, "we'll only know if there's a lot of it if and when there are a lot of young people with BSE".
First, the testing is of symptomatic cows, not asymptomatic cows, and it is deliberately not a random sample, but a sample of the population that is most likely to have it.
Second, my point is that the lack of any cases of young people with vCJD in the US, let alone widespread cases, indicates that it simply isn't the case that we have some phantom population of cows with BSE that are being let through by the USDA.
> Or at least not block those who want to try it.
I agree the USDA shouldn't block it. However, it isn't unreasonable to prohibit marketing based on the use of such tests if they give an unwarranted impression of safety; allowing that would be misleading advertising. When Creekstone applied to do testing, it was precisely for this reason that they applied, and for this reason they were denied.
> They couldn't be detected by those tests anyway if they don't have symptoms, or at least not until shortly before symptoms become apparent.
Your topmost comment mentioned tests can detect BSE "2-3 months before" symptoms. That'd catch more than waiting for symptoms - especially if done broadly! Waiting for symptoms, when the window-of-detection is so small & so late-in-life, & most cows slaughtered young, seems designed for entities that "would rather not know".
> Most importantly COVID tests can detect if you have COVID even when asymptomatic, but BSE tests cannot detect BSE before it is symptomatic.
This contradicts the explicit 2-3 months before symptoms claim you made previously. Also, being less restrictive about testing could create the necessary market for more sensitive tests. If a cow can have it its full life, but it only reaches detectable levels after years, maybe tests can eventually detect the early presence.
> First, the testing is of symptomatic cows, not asymptomatic cows, and it is deliberately not a random sample, but a sample of the population that is most likely to have it.
Exactly! There's zero testing where it wouldn't already be suspected. So no chance to discover a problem early, or challenge the assumptions limiting testing.
> Second, my point is that the lack of any cases of young people with vCJD in the US, let alone widespread cases, indicates that it simply isn't the case that we have some phantom population of cows with BSE that are being let through by the USDA.
Indeed, but the correlate of that is that the regime you're advocating can thus only detect a problem after a bunch of atypical, or weven "widespread", cases are noticed. That's the signal you're waiting for, before testing more.
That approach sucked for COVID, it'll suck for BSE.
I'm curious why you'd say that. It sounds to me like a bureaucrat pointing out a scientific fact about the testing.
I'm not an expert on testing for prions, but it doesn't surprise me that the test isn't good enough to pronounce an animal disease-free. And if that's correct, it's very much their purview to make it clear that advertising it as disease-free would be false.
Most of the work at US agencies is done by career employees who are largely insulated from changes at the top. Politics certainly happens, but rarely at the level of individual decisions like this.
Such agencies certainly aren't immune to regulatory capture, and it's conceivable that it's the case here. The scientists and bureaucrats who wrote that have likely worked with the cattle industry their whole careers, and have many personal contacts. Same for their bosses.
But this memo turns on a specific technical point. If the tests aren't good enough, then they're not good enough. It wouldn't take regulatory capture for them to reach that conclusion, and this memo is exactly how they'd say it. It's also what it could sound like if they were being influenced by industry, but I'd say that the burden of proof is on somebody making that claim.
"Most new cars sold in USA have breaks that work. It doesnt make sense to test them since this would give the public a wrong impression that cars are safe".
If 3,4 million new cars are sold in USA then probably 99% are generally ok. Because in current world generally most things are ok by default (custom software might be different, but off the shelf software generally works).
But if you would be unlucky 1% where nobody checked the breaks... this would be 34 yhousand cars.
And there is much more cattle raised and consumed so checking everything makes sense.
Not checking anything because 99% will be ok is a pseudoscientific argument.
> "Most new cars sold in USA have breaks that work. It doesnt make sense to test them since this would give the public a wrong impression that cars are safe".
This isn't what the argument against testing every cow is about. It is really 'You can't test every car's brakes with a test that will say the car's brakes are OK even if those brakes are bad'. If a food product had a toxic ingredient, do you think it's appropriate for a company to run a test that can detect it, say, 50% of the time, and say their product is xyz-toxin-free? What if the test is only effective 10% of the time? 1%?
The USDA didn't decide not to perform no tests for BSE tests at all. They decided to perform tests specifically for those cases where, if the cow had BSE, the test could actually catch it. Again, I don't entirely agree with the USDA's approach, but it isn't unreasonable.
> But the agency ruled that the BSE test was licensed only for "surveillance" of animal health, and rejected Creekstone's request because it implied "a consumer safety aspect" that was "not scientifically warranted."
I read this as "you can test your animals if you want to, but you can't then use the results to make any claim or statement about them". I suspect they're free to test their animals, but not free to stamp "100% tested BSE-free beef!" on their steaks. I suspect this is what's meant by "surveillance". If that's the case, I agree with the gov't; private testing shouldn't be used to make claims. But it could be used for internal product safety, and if anything comes back positive, the USDA could be brought in to verify and take action.
The “fun” question is whether prions are present in milk and other dairy products. One might argue that they are not, by virtue of them being largely localized to neural tissue.
Of course, this raises the question of how CWD is being transmitted in elk, since elk don’t eat elk.
“Scientists believe CWD proteins (prions) likely spread between animals through body fluids like feces, saliva, blood, or urine, either through direct contact or indirectly through environmental contamination of soil, food or water.”
That’s not at all why drugs work quickly through the nose - it has absolutely nothing to do with nerve endings, it has everything to do with a large surface area of mucus membranes allowing quick uptake into the venous system.
I stopped eating US beef many years ago for this very reason. The Japanese are not stupid and it's quite obvious that something fishy is going on.
Knowing what we know about the practices of most US beef farms and the countless USDA failures in both detection and enforcement of rules/regulations meant to protect the consumer, I think it's the wise path to take for everyone living here.
A. BSE tests are not conducted on cuts of meat, but involve taking samples from the brain of a dead animal to see if the infectious agent is present. We know that the earliest point at which current tests can accurately detect BSE is 2-to-3 months before the animal begins to show symptoms. The time between initial infection and the appearance of symptoms is about 5 years. Since most cattle that go to slaughter in the United States are both young and clinically normal, testing all slaughter cattle for BSE might offer misleading assurances of safety to the public.
The BSE surveillance program is not for the purposes of determining food safety. Rather, it is an animal health surveillance program. USDA's BSE surveillance program allows USDA to detect the disease if it exists at very low levels in the U.S. cattle population and provides assurances to consumers and our international trading partners that the interlocking system of safeguards in place to prevent BSE are working.
The risk of cow->human BSE transmission is infinitesimal. Species barriers in prions are surprisingly strong and, for practical purposes, nearly impermeable [0]. In fact, the Prion Protein (PrP) in humans causes multiple distinct diseases including CJD, Kuru, and FFI. Infectious prion confirmations are probably highly influenced by glycosylation [1,2]. Even if this testing wasn't god awfully slow, it's unclear one learns anything from it.
What you are saying is dangerous. We had a serious set of exactly these transmission events in Britain only a few decades ago. Clearly the risk is not infinitesimal.
Dangerous? The hypothesized connection is not remotely clear. In vitro transformation of human PrP into PrP(Sc) by bovine PrP(Sc) is a necessary for the causal model. The fact that a strong species barrier exists, in vitro and in vivo, points towards a spurious association.
It's understandable why one might infer from the correlation that there's a relationship but this is confounded by observation. The baseline expectation for CJD in a population is 1-2 cases/million [0]. vCJD cases in the UK never exceeded 30/yr [1, Fig 2. a]. Yes, vCJD occurs primarily in younger people - but that's circular as vCJD is defined as CJD-like disease with early onset. If cross-species transmission were common, one would expect a similar spike in age >40.
The incidence of vCJD, even at its peak, was exceedingly rare. Many things, such as observation bias, pollution, or rare side-effects from faddish street drugs could be at fault here. It's tempting to jump to conclusions, a la "eating fats makes you fat," but it's totally unwarranted in the face of the in vitro and in vivo data demonstrating strong species barriers.
>The risk of cow->human BSE transmission is infinitesimal.
I don't think your sources support this conclusion.
bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) rarely passes the species barrier, but it is difficult, if not impossible to estimate what the rate is in the absence of mitigations.
There are a plethora of unknowns that make it very difficult to check transmission rate.
Transmission is rare, but this could be impacted by lots of factors. There were hundreds of thousands of cows in the UK, but there were also testing and culling programs to try to prevent them from entering the food supply. There were also regulations on which parts of the cows could be used for human consumption.
Last but not least, there are huge uncertainties around the diagnosis rate of mad cow in humans.
For example, a 2013 study (1) found that 1 in 2000 people in the UK now have Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Based on this, it could be possible that transmission rates are very high if a human were to eat mad cow nervous tissue.
This study is looking at the appendix, not any brain tissue. Without considering symptoms, it's possible that altered PrP expression and/or folding in the appendix does not cause vCJD or result from exposure to PrP(Sc).
Also, these antibodies are not very selective for a given confirmation. Idk how this made it into the BMJ because standard in the PrP field is a protease resistance assay given the issues with Ab specificity.
This article is from the UK National Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance and Control and is cited by by the NHS and widely in the literature.
I am not an expert in the field, but it seems relevant to consider latent or asymptomatic PrP expression when assessing how often it crosses the species barrier.
I think there's a pretty fundamental difference between "allowing farms to police themselves" and actually prohibiting them from doing voluntary testing for diseases. I would compare it to the difference between eliminating a need for prescriptions and prohibiting people from getting screened for skin cancer on the regular.
Is there a better reason to prohibit voluntary testing than what is included in the article?
That isn't what is happening. The USDA is prohibiting suplemental testing. The allegation is that this is because that might reveal cases of infection that would show the USDA testing policies are not sufficient.
Thus the USDA is placing their reputation over the health of US citizens.
Another poster makes the argument that the USDA does not prohibit supplemental testing, it just prohibits making safety claims on the basis of supplemental testing.
I find their argument far more persuasive than yours. Is there more to yours?
No, the USDA prohibited testing. The reason they offered for prohibiting the testing was purportedly their concern for false safety claims. They didn't merely prohibit what they consider to be misleading claims, they used their regulatory power to block the testing.
>It asked the USDA for permission to buy test kits from a California company that made the equipment in France. However, under the Virus-Serum-Toxin Act, the government can regulate the manufacturing and sale of “any virus, serum, toxin, or analogous product for use in the treatment of domestic animals.”
The USDA deemed the “rapid BSE test” a “treatment” under the Act and banned Creekstone from buying test kits from Bio-Rad.
The persuasivity of an argument does not guarantee its truthfulness.
There are plenty of sources, including court documents, that verify that the USDA was trying to prevent private testing, not just claims being made on the basisnof private testing.
The ban on testing was justified by the USDA based on the potential for safety claims, but the ban itself was on testing.
I don't personally buy the argument, if the US testing was sufficient to guarantee safety I see no consumer harm in allowing additional (potentially ineffective) testing that could help a US producer satisfy other countries' import controls.
Creekstone specifically argued for its use for marketing purposes:[0]
> Creekstone claims to have suffered $200,000 per day in lost revenue as a result of the diminished export market. Stewart Decl. ¶ 17. Moreover, in markets where U.S. beef is available, Creekstone contends that consumer fears about BSE have diminished its sales. See Id. ¶¶ 4, 5 (discussing market surveys in Japan and U.S.). To allay the concerns of consumers and importers, in 2004 Creekstone made a “business decision” to perform the rapid BSE test on each cow it slaughters. ... USDA memorialized its decision to deny Creekstone permission to purchase rapid BSE test kits from Bio-Rad in a June 1, 2004 letter, concluding that “allowing a company to use a BSE test in a private marketing program is inconsistent with USDA's mandate to ensure effective, scientifically sound testing for significant animal diseases and maintain domestic and international confidence in U.S. cattle and beef products.”
Anyway, at the time of the decision, Japan was allowing US exports of beef (this was argued by the USDA in the district court, which they did not pursue on appeal), so their effort was purely a marketing one. For the record, Japan would subsequently go on to ban American beef again, before allowing imports of American beef once more in 2019, after they themselves had scaled back their BSE testing in 2017 to only symptomatic cows.
Would the USDA have allowed Creekstone to use the test if they had said they were going to use it as part of an animal health monitoring measure, which is what the USDA's program is? Maybe, but obviously Creekstone wasn't using it for that purpose if they were wanting to test every cow, including cows for which the test could not possibly detect BSE even if they had it.
You seems to be laboring under several misapprehensions.
> Japan would subsequently go on to ban American beef again, before allowing imports of American beef once more in 2019,
1) The Japanese rules on beef exports did not change significantly between 2006 and 2019. The ban on old beef that was imposed in 2006 was not lifted until 2019. While an argument relating to this was brough up in the original case (that the USDA lost) but not in the appeals case (that the USDA won.)
2) Nothing in the decision in favor of the USDA that I saw was justified on the basis of the purposes of the testing. The decision came down that the judges readings of what authority the USDA has under US law.
So yes, the USDA has the authority to prevent testing and has used it in ways that directly harmed a US business and I don't see how they protected anyone in the process.
Just because our laws give the USDA that authority, doesn't mean that is a good thing.
No, I'm referring to the regulatory capture and revolving door culture at USDA that has allowed Monsanto et. al., to douse your kids cereal with glyphosate, refuse hemp production in the U.S., water down the Organic Governance Board with corporate shills, etc., etc.
But the agency ruled that the BSE test was licensed only for "surveillance" of animal health, and rejected Creekstone's request because it implied "a consumer safety aspect" that was "not scientifically warranted."
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-05/uoia-ftf0515...