Government considers testing for mad cow disease

WASHINGTON — While no case of mad cow infection has ever been found in the United States, the Agriculture Department and Food and Drug Administration are looking at new ways to prevent the disease.

One proposal being discussed is to test all cows that get sick and die on a farm, even if mad cow is not suspected. Discovery of a sick cow in Canada has led the United States to re-examine ways to protect U.S. herds.

Veterinarians and food safety regulators test for mad cow disease because it is linked to a similar incurable illness that afflicts humans, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. An estimated 100 people died of the illness in Europe after an outbreak of mad cow disease in the 1980s.

The Agriculture Department’s idea in testing for mad cow disease in cattle that get sick or die on the farm is to head off problems early, prevent the brain-wasting illness from infecting animals and, ultimately, to protect consumers.

The agency also is proposing, in an effort to lower risk for the disease, that farmers stop sending carcasses to rendering plants to be processed for pet food and animal feed.

The FDA is considering a proposal to expand a ban on using cattle brain and spinal tissue, which is easily infected with mad cow disease. The ban would cover all animal feed — not just feed for cattle, sheep and goats — and would include pet food. The first occurrence of the disease in Britain was believed to have resulted from cows’ eating feed made from carcasses of sheep infected with scrapie, an ovine form of the infliction.

Cattle industry officials say that effectively could end the use of cows in food for pets and livestock. Renderers are reluctant to spend a lot of money removing brain and spinal cords from dead animals. Farmers usually have to pay them a fee to haul away sick and dead cattle to produce animal feed.

Farmers would have little choice but to bury their animals on their farms or illegally dump them elsewhere. Incineration is ineffective in killing mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Rendering, which basically cooks the meat, can kill harmful bacteria such as E. coli, but does not kill mad cow.

Mad cow disease is believed to be caused by a deformed protein that attacks the brain, turning it into a spongelike mass. The disease, part of a family of illnesses known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, is spread through eating brain or nerve tissue of infected animals. It is incurable.