Mad Cows, Mad System: What the Two Washingtons Could Have Taught Us About Meat Safety – and Why They Didn’t

By Wylie Harris

Touchstone Magazine

March 2004

 

December’s discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in a Washington-state cattle herd cast a sour pall over Christmas at my family’s north Texas cattle ranch.  We’d spent the latter months of 2003 simultaneously marveling over the highest cattle prices the market had seen in years, and edgily hoping they’d last until January, when we usually sell the calves out of our small herd.  The mad-cow case in Washington brought those hopes tumbling down into reality, confirming what Annie Proulx has called "the rancher’s expectation of disaster."  But then, a scant couple of weeks later, prices were right back up as high as they’d been before the brief mad-cow scare - if "scare" is indeed a term to fit U.S. meateaters’ attention-deficit acknowledgement of BSE’s first appearance here.  Since carnivores in the U.S. consume 90 % of the beef this country produces, the market seems secure.  As a rancher, I suppose I ought to be happy about that.  But for several reasons – other than the check I’ll take home from the sale barn, that is – I’m not.

 

The U.S. meat industry is so fraught with the risks of large-scale, high-speed production that such an episode seemed inevitable.  But USDA and food industry damage-control machinery spun into such quick and effective action that the case’s impact was thoroughly blunted, at least inside the U.S.  Nipping consumer panic in the bud was probably both wise and justified.  But the blanket assurances deployed to do the nipping seem to have been too successful, deflecting questions about production practices and safety standards that are long overdue in public discussion.

 

Like the problem, the explanation begins with a calf destined to become steak.  Half of such calves in the U.S. are born into herds of 100 or fewer animals, and spend the first part of their lives roaming around an open pasture and eating mostly or entirely the plants that they find there.  When they’re sold into feedlots for fattening, though, they enter a whole new world.  However small and numerous their birth herds, nearly 90 % of feedlot cattle live in a few giant herds of 500 animals or more [1].

 

Feedlots are the first likely point in this sequence at which calves could be exposed to BSE – which, as far as science can tell, is transmitted when one animal consumes the tissue of another, previously infected animal.  To minimize that risk, the FDA has banned feeding ruminant tissue to ruminants since 1997.  But when it reports 99 % compliance with that rule, the agency is calculating the figure based mainly on inspections of feedlots’ records, rather than of the feed itself.  This amounts to taking agribusiness corporations’ word that they have observed the ban.  Given that the top 5 feedlot owners include firms like Cargill and ConAgra, both featured in the news over the past few years for multimillion-pound recalls of tainted meat from their packing plants, such faith is questionable [2, 3].

 

Worse yet, BSE is only one of many health risks inherent in feedlot beef production.  Cattle on a high-grain diet have more acid in their digestive tracts, which increases the numbers of acid-tolerant bacteria.  Since the human digestive system relies on acid to rid itself of harmful bacteria, grain feeding removes an important line of defense.  The cramped conditions of feedlots are ideal incubators for cattle diseases, which managers stave off with large and frequent doses – nearly half of the annual U.S. production – of antibiotics.  Just as a high-acid environment selects for acid-tolerant bacteria, frequent exposure to antibiotics breeds antibiotic-resistant strains - weakening one of human medicine’s most effective tools for filling in where the immune system fails [4]. 

 

In addition to their adverse health effects, feedlots pose environmental hazards.  Before the advent of feedlots, livestock and crops were commonly produced on the same farm.  The animals’ manure fertilized the fields that grow their feed.  With feedlots’ separation of livestock and crop production, the manure accumulates in storage lagoons, each one a potential environmental disaster just waiting for the next heavy rain.  Meanwhile, with their manure supply cut off, fields and pastures depend for fertility on purchased synthetic fertilizers, whose production burns large amounts of fossil fuels.  The long-distance transport of grain and animals further increases the feedlot system’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.  Feedlot beef production thus imposes a list of health and environmental hazards in place of a system that shared none of them.  There are few perspectives from which this makes sense.

 

From feedlots, grain-fattened calves move into slaughter plants, making up 82 % of US beef supply.  They are joined there by another 16 %: old dairy cows [5].  Some 130,000 of these are "downers" – cattle too sick to walk – like the BSE-infected on in Washington state [6].  Prior to the discovery of that case, the USDA inspected 1 out of every 10 downer cattle slaughtered.  In one of its most effective responses to the case, it has now banned such cattle from human consumption.  Meanwhile, other countries’ inspection rates – 25 % of all cattle slaughtered in England, and 100 % in Japan – give the lie to the USDA’s claim that the U.S. inspection system guaranteed the safety of this country’s beef.  Critics maintain that the system worked better to ensure that BSE wasn’t detected [7].  The contrasts also puts U.S. trade negotiators in the ticklish position of asking countries like Japan & England – against whose beef the US still maintains multi-year bans – to resume their own imports of US beef after a few short weeks [8]. Taking the wind from optimistic claims that the U.S.’s first mad-cow case will be its only one is this statistic: of the 23 countries where BSE has appeared, all but 4 have had multiple cases [9].

 

The industrial system that slaughters and  processes beef cattle is just as concentrated than the one that fattens them on grain .  A mere fourteen plants, each handling over a million animals a year, process and pack 63 % of U.S. beef [10].  At a plant this size, even the most scrupulous compliance with safety regulations cannot change the arithmetic: a single mistake can mean tainted beef reaching millions of consumers all over the country.  This is why the magnitude of ConAgra’s July 2002 meat recall (19 million pounds) is more representative than extraordinary.  It also reveals the sheer luck of the draw that the BSE-infected cow was processed in a lot of 10,400 pounds, reaching "only" 40 businesses in 8 states [11].  Finally, it provides the context for the finding that half of the meat for sale in the Washington, D.C. area contains antibiotic resistant bacteria [12].  For all their madness, there is a twisted sort of justice in these patterns: since we all must eat, the legislators and food-industry executives who perpetuate this system have to consume the same risky food that it foists on the rest of the nation and world.

 

For the explanation of such counterproductive systems of food safety, it is only necessary to consider the profit motives and political power of a highly consolidated, concentrated, and connected agribusiness industry [13].  In 2002 and again in 2003, Congress considered – and, after heavy lobbying by dairy industry groups, rejected – bans on downer cattle for human consumption [14].  The 2002 Farm Bill contained provisions for country-of-origin labeling (COOL), which – among other things – would have let investigators determine the origin of the infected cow in a few minutes rather than a few days.  The Bush administration invited comments only from groups opposed to COOL, and Congress delayed its implementation until September 2006, 2 years after it was supposed to take effect.  Spurred by BSE, the USDA’s new regulatory ban on downer animals highlights Congress’ inaction – though a similar bill may pass in the new session as a face-saving measure.  Then again, perhaps not.  Early in the new session, the Senate – ignoring the 85 % of consumers who want country-of-origin labeling, and the 81 % willing even to pay more for it – gave a 65-28 go-ahead to the omnibus spending bill that delays COOL's implementation until 2006 [15].

 

Industry rhetoric against downer bans, COOL, and increased BSE inspections included a common and dominant theme: cost of the regulations to industry (and thus to both consumers and producers).  But the numbers don't lie.  Disregarding the USDA’s grossly inflated figure for COOL (as did the General Accounting Office), the high-end estimates of these costs were $200 million [16] and $300 million [17] per year, respectively.   Presumably, the two together total to less than the campaign-contribution price of sufficient votes against regulation.  However, they are a fraction of the $3 billion the beef industry will lose every year that importers of U.S. beef maintain their BSE-inspired bans [18].  (As if further demonstration were needed that the food industry wields its political clout with the arm of short-term profit rather than public and environmental health, the Bush administration demanded "significant changes" to a new World Health Organization report – for its none-too-radical claim that lower personal consumption of refined sugars, and higher intakes of fruits and vegetables, would help combat the growing world obesity epidemic [19].)

 

One of the food industry's criticisms of the WHO report was that it emphasized government action over "individual responsibility."  Ironically enough, while the industry may have the market for government (in)action cornered in the U.S., individual responsibility is the key to replacing it with a system that truly protects the health and safety of food.  And though the number of dollars and miles between John Q. Public and Washington, D.C. may seem daunting, meaningful change at the individual and community levels is only as far away as the next grocery run.  Like all meat from pasture-raised animals, grass-fed beef carries much-reduced risks of bacterial contamination and BSE exposure, and contains both fewer and healthier fats than the grain-fed standard [20].  Purchasing from small, local processors handling much lower volumes of meat can further minimize the risks of contamination.  These safety multipliers are complemented by economic ones, with food dollars spent on locally-raised and –processed meat circulating longer in, and bolstering, local economies. The environment benefits as well, with all the gas consumed in the transport of feedlot grain, animals, and inputs staying in the pump, and manure staying out of ground and surface water.  With U.S. beef exports essentially curtailed, at least for the near term, this country’s small but growing market for grass-fed beef depends wholly on domestic consumption, while countries where grass-fed beef predominates –  like Argentina, Australia, Brazil, and New Zealand –  supply the rest of the world.   And though corporate conglomerations overwhelmingly dominate the current beef-finishing and –processing system, recall that the large majority of its animals start out on small farms – and could easily be finished there as well.  With custom-processing plants still a common feature in towns across the southern Plains, the only factor missing for a resurgence of local, grass-fed beef economies is an increase in consumer demand [21, 22].  Web sites like www.eatwellguide.org offer easy access to the nearest suppliers capable of catering to that demand.  In the words of Colorado rancher Kathleen Sullivan Kelley, "The last and most important firewall of protection we have is the knowledgeable consumer."

 

1.             Peel, D.S. and C.E. Ward, Feeder Cattle Production and Marketing, in Beef Cattle Handbook, D. Strobehn, Editor. 1999, Beef Cattle Resource Committee of the North Central Land Grant Universities.

2.             Dye, S., N. Bermudez, and J. Coyle, Rapsheet on Animal Factories.  2002, Sierra Club: San Francisco, CA.

3.             Heffernan, W., M. Hendrickson, and R. Gronski, Study on concentration in U.S. agriculture.  1999, National Farmers' Union.

4.             Lotter, D., Antibiotic resistant bacteria in store-bought meats.  2003, NewFarm.org.

<http://newfarm.org/news/1203/121903/dd_store-bought.shtml>

5.             Background data on U.S. beef industry. 2004, USDA Economic Research Service.

6.             Parker-Pope, T., Why Blaming Canada Isn't Enough: U.S. Mad Cow Inspections Lack Teeth, in Wall Street Journal. 30 December 2003.

7.             Guebert, A., Other Mad Facts, . 7 January 2004, NewFarm.org.

                <http://newfarm.org/columns/final_word/0104/1.2.04.shtml>

8.             Stecklow, S. and S. Kilman, As U.S. Pleads Mad-Cow Case, Past Practices Are a Handicap, in Wall Street Journal. 8 January 2004.

9.             World Organization of Animal Health, Number of reported cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) worldwide. 2003. <http://www.oie.int/eng/info/en_esbmonde.htm>

10.           MacDonald, J.M., et al., Consolidation in U.S. Meatpacking. 2000, Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture: Washington, D.C.

11.           Kilman, S., Mad Cow Hits the U.S.; U.S. Pegs Mad Cow Exposure at 81, in Wall Street Journal. 30 December 2003.

12.           Schroeder, C.M., et al., Isolation of antimicrobial-resistant Eschericia coli from retail meats purchased in Greater Washington, DC, USA. International Journal of Food Microbiology, 2003. 85:197-202.

13.           Lueck, S., Cattlemen Saddle Up for Duels Over Rules, in Wall Street Journal. 8 January 2004.

14.           FOXnews.com, "Downer" Animals Twice Ignored by Congress, .24 December 2003. <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,106647,00.html>

15.           Guebert, A., On the Road: Denver, 26 January 2004, NewFarm.org. <http://newfarm.org/columns/final_word/0104/1.26.04.shtml>

16.           Ray, D.E., The Cost of Being COOL, in MidAmerica Farmer Grower 21. 23 May 2003.

17.           Kilman, S., S. Stecklow, and L. McGinley, Mad-Cow Case in U.S. Shows Gaps in System, in Wall Street Journal. 26 December 2003.

18.           Guebert, A., So, If It's Clearly Canadian.… 16 January 2004, NewFarm.org. <http://newfarm.org/columns/final_word/0104/1.16.04.shtml>

19.           Stein, R., U.S. Says It Will Contest WHO Plan to Fight Obesity, in Washington Post. 16 January 2004.

20.           Robinson, J., Why Grassfed Is Best! 2000, Vashon, WA: Vashon Island Press.

21.           Diel & Associates, Study of Consumer Perceptions of All Natural Meat Products. 2001, Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture.

22.           Holcomb, R.B. and C.E. Ward, Operational changes and management issues for Oklahoma meat processors. 2001, Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture.