031258 Perception -- Not Reality -- Fuels Scare Over Beef

Industry officials, food safety experts and consumer advocates lined up to argue over the future of beef in America, making clear that the question of whether the nation is facing a mad cow crisis is a matter of perception.

President Bush's handlers stressed that he is still eating beef. And a variety of academics defended the country's system of detection and protection, saying that even now the risk to animals -- and to humans -- is very low.

But Consumers Union and other advocacy groups called on the government to ratchet up its efforts, fearing that infected cattle and cattle products aren't being caught in the narrow net being cast for a disease that is fatal to humans.

About 20,500 of the more than 35 million cattle slaughtered this year were tested.

"The system did not work well. We clearly have to test far more animals," said Michael Hansen, senior research associate with Consumers Union's Consumer Policy Institute. "Europe tests approximately 11 million out of the national herd of 40 million. Japan tests every single animal that goes to slaughter."

It's not clear yet if American consumers have decided to pull beef from the menu because a cow in Washington state was found with the disease this week -- Christmas dinners most frequently feature poultry and ham these days.

But cattle exporters have lost 90% of their international buyers, prompting the price of beef futures to plummet for a second trading day Friday on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

By Friday, more than 20 countries had banned imports of beef from the United States, the world's leading exporter of the meat. Sales abroad account for about 10% of the roughly $30 billion a year industry.

Tomorrow, a U.S. delegation will arrive in Japan to discuss the situation with officials in that nation, which purchases more than $1 billion of U.S. beef annually but closed its borders to the meat this week.

In the near term, consumers may actually see beef prices -- which have been at historic highs -- decline at grocery stores and restaurants, industry officials said, as the market is flooded with beef that was originally destined for export. And any decline in consumer demand could force retailers to discount prices until the situation is resolved.

"The whole world is going to look to see how we handle it," said David R. Lineback, director of the Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, a collaborative project between the University of Maryland and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

USDA officials, who said Friday that they had quarantined two calves from the infected Washington cow, are considering options, including increasing the number of cows tested annually for the degenerative neurological disease.

They've also discussed implanting microchips in ear tags to track every animal from birth to its entry into the food system and writing new regulations for the handling of brain and spinal material from slaughtered cattle.

The agency had intended to raise the number of animals tested next year to 38,000 but may re-evaluate now that the disease has appeared. USDA spokeswoman Julie Quick said the country's surveillance system is designed to detect infection in one in 1 million animals with 95% certainty.

"The steps we would be taking would be out of an abundance of caution," she said.

Few expect that regulators will follow Japan's lead and require that all animals be tested, a move that some estimate would cost the industry hundreds of millions of dollars. The meatpacking industry has resisted calls for universal testing, arguing that the cost would be prohibitive.

But the United States may find itself pressured into significantly more extensive testing.

In the European Union, all animals older than 30 months of age are tested, because animal health experts think infections only occur in older animals. There have been reports of even younger animals testing positive in Japan.

"If the U.S. doesn't test, Japan's just not going to buy," Hansen predicted.

Janet M. Riley, a spokeswoman for the American Meat Institute, which represents meatpackers, said the mad cow surveillance system in the United States is more aggressive than in all other countries except those that have suffered an outbreak of the disease.

"We have a 100-million-head herd, and we have got one positive case with a surveillance system that exceeds the international standard by 40 times," she said.

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association said Friday that it supports the USDA's plans to increase testing and doesn't think the meat from those animals should be shipped until the results come back.

"It's not a matter of money: We absolutely want to [identify] what level of testing is appropriate," said Gary Weber, executive director of regulatory affairs for the association.

Will Hueston, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Animal Health and Food Safety, thinks testing all animals "would be a colossal waste of taxpayer funds" because young cattle have a "minuscule risk" for infection and are unlikely to test positive even if they have been exposed. Scientists say it takes several years for the disease to incubate.

He suggests instead that the government ban high-risk food -- brains and spinal cords from adult cattle, which are delicacies in some cultures but pass on the infection if the animal had mad cow disease.

Officially called bovine spongiform encephalopathy, mad cow leads to a variant of Creutzfeldt- Jakob disease for humans, a fatal brain disorder.

Hueston said the government should require that processors remove the spinal cord before inserting meat into de-boning machines, and keep the machinery in proper working order so it doesn't pull potentially dangerous nerve bundles along with good meat.

"The sky's not falling," he added. "The beef industry will survive."

He thinks it's helpful that the country banned the use of cattle parts in cattle feed in 1997 to remove a major pathway by which the disease spreads. Japanese officials put their feed ban in place after they identified their first case of the disease, he said.

But Consumers Union said there are holes in the American ban. Meat processors are allowed to render cattle parts including the brain and spinal cord for feed meant for other animals, which can find its way to cows, Hansen said. Cattle blood -- which can carry the infection -- can be fed to cattle, he said.

David Ropeik, director of risk communication at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, expects the economic effect of one mad cow will be significant, but he thinks the international reaction isn't completely justified. Two years ago, the center studied the possible effects of a U.S. outbreak and found that even 500 sick animals couldn't cause an epidemic -- "the disease chokes itself off and dies out."

"Clearly the science doesn't warrant this level of precaution," he said, calling it "more an issue of perception than risk reality.

"The overall risk from one sporadic case -- or a handful -- is very low."

The consumer reaction in has been somewhat muted.

Some Baltimore area grocery chains said they have trained sales staff to answer questions, and Giant Food planned to post signs in its stores to reassure customers that its beef products are safe.

At grocery retailer Whole Foods Market, store officials reported that only two customers at its Baltimore- and Washing ton-area stores had returned beef products after hearing about the mad cow case. Whole Foods, which only sells meat from animals fed a vegetarian diet, expects to gain business.

"Whenever there is a perceived threat to the safety of the food supply, we see an increase in our business," said Sarah Kenney, a spokeswoman for Whole Foods.

Organically grown meat accounts for about 1% of total meat sales in the United States, but industry officials say that number is growing rapidly.

Any reaction by consumers is likely to be short-lived, said David Sadeghi, chief operating officer of Big Steaks Management Inc., which owns several local Ruth's Chris Steak Houses and the Babalu Grill, Havana Club and Eurasian Harbor restaurants in Baltimore.

Some diners may decide not to eat beef for a while, he said, but most will recognize over time that premium beef served at high-end steakhouses is from quality sources that have numerous safeguards in place. High-priced cuts come from a part of the animal that is unlikely to be touched by brain or spinal matter.

"We hope it's not going to affect us that bad, but I can't tell you that today," Sadeghi said, referring to consumer reaction.

Source: Baltimore Sun

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