031266 Risky Tissue Getting Into Beef Supply?

Rocky Mountain News - Cattle tissues known to carry the infectious agents behind mad cow disease are making it into the nation's meat supply despite industry and government claims to the contrary.

Americans are consuming the tissues in a variety of processed meats, including fast-food hamburgers, taco meat and hot dogs, according to food and health activists who point to several government and academic studies on the matter.

Advertisement Meat industry officials say the high-risk materials - namely the brain and spinal cord - are routinely removed from animals, leaving the rest of the meat safe for consumption.

But a 2002 survey by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found "unacceptable" central nervous system residue, including spinal cord tissue, in 35% of the meat that ends up in items such as hot dogs, pizza toppings and hamburger.

Such tissues are where the infectious agents behind mad cow disease congregate. Known as prions, the agents are a kind of rogue protein that have led to a human version of mad cow disease that has killed 153 people.

"The presence of spinal cord in meat is not expected and cannot be allowed in products produced through the (meat recovery) system," said the Food Safety Inspection Service, a branch of the USDA, in a report on the survey.

Other studies also have revealed the presence of risky nervous system tissues in meat. Watchdog groups say contamination occurs in the slaughterhouse when:

• The spinal cord is severed with a band saw, spraying spinal cord fluid onto the carcass. One European study found such contamination occurred in every case that researchers examined.

• Compressing the brain with a stun gun or other device when the animal is killed can send brain tissue deep into the blood stream and the body. The industry has taken steps to alleviate this, but some research indicates it remains a risk.

• A process known as Advanced Meat Recovery, designed to strip the last bit of meat from the skeleton, has allowed spinal cord and other nervous system tissues into the product that results, a fact borne out most recently by the USDA's 2002 survey.

• Some bones, including the spinal column that can have bits of spinal cord inside, are boiled to produce beef stock, extract and flavoring.

The discarded parts, including the spinal cord and other skeletal remains, are sent to rendering plants, where they're mixed with other animal leftovers to make pet food, feed for pigs and chickens and other products.

"The administration and industry have been parroting this line that one need not worry about meat because one need not worry about brain and spinal cord," said Michael Greger, a doctor in New York state and a nationally known watchdog on mad cow disease. He says he finds plenty of cause for concern.

But an animal sciences professor at Colorado State University disputed the notion that risky cattle parts were making their way into the food supply.

CSU's Keith Belk said processes on the slaughterhouse floor, including vacuuming out the spinal cord from the spinal column, better methods of stunning cows before they're killed and inspections of meat stripped from skeletal remains are strong safeguards.

"You never want to say it never happens," said Belk, who has reviewed slaughter facilities around the country. But, he added, "there's nobody in the business who thinks it's good business to do things that are dangerous to their consumers. (Industry) has taken all of these things pretty seriously, especially when it came to the (mad cow) issue."

The process might not be perfect, but it's close, said Rosemary Mucklow, head of the National Meat Association in Oakland, Calif.

"Do mistakes happen? Once in a while they can," she said. "Once in a while people look both ways before they cross the road, and they still get run over.

"We try very hard to do the right thing," Mucklow said. "I know the people I visit who make this product work very hard to reach the highest standards because they, too, eat the end product."

The debate over the potential risk posed by contamination of meat from a cow's brain or spinal tissue comes against a backdrop when only a single case of mad cow disease has been found in the United States, and not a single person has been known to contract the disease in this country, industry and government officials point out.

But watchdogs note that the USDA tested only about one in every 2,000 slaughtered cattle for the disease last fiscal year. That means the government may not have caught other cases, and meat from those cows could have been long ago consumed, or is yet to be eaten.

Add to that the fact that symptoms of the disease take anywhere from 10 to perhaps 40 years to appear in people, and human cases may not show up for some time.

"No one really knows what the final death toll is going to be and how many people are incubating the disease," said Greger, who advocates stricter regulation of slaughterhouse practices and more testing of cattle.

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