Who's mad now?

Every now and then, a blood drive comes to campus and all I can do is sit, watch and remember the good old days when I could join in the fun. Nowadays, the American Red Cross won't touch my otherwise first-rate type O, because of the year I spent in England in the late 90s at the peak of the mad cow scare. They are now keen on making sure our blood supply doesn't get tainted. It's a reasonable precaution. It's too bad the American agricultural industry had not been so careful.\nThis past Christmas, America got a very unexpected and unwanted gift -- our very first mad cow ... after years of assurance that it could never happen here. The discovery was made after the animal had been slaughtered, so the meat had to be recalled. This little incident raises some questions about our food supply and how it's regulated. \nHow did the government handle this crisis? Confronted with this threat to health and the economy, the U.S. Department of Agriculture appointed an international team of experts. About a week ago, they reported there was a "high probability" of more cases of mad cow in the U.S. The Secretary of Agriculture, Ann Veneman, took decisive action and promptly advised the American public to ... ignore the international panel of experts. In short, she stated confidently that we didn't have a thing to worry our pretty little carnivorous heads about. \nNothing worries me more than being confidently assured I don't need to worry. \nHere is a little mad cow primer: mad cow, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is a disease thought to be spread when an animal consumes parts of another animal that had the disease. (Of course, for those of you unfamiliar with our bovine friends -- they are not natural cannibals or carnivores.) People who are unlucky enough to consume tainted meat product may become ill with one form of an illness called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which tends to be fatal. \nOkay, don't panic. The odds you would come down with CJD are fairly remote. In England, where the outbreak was really bad, around 142 people were "infected," though around 200,000 cows were "destroyed."\nIs history repeating itself? The U.K. initially downplayed the severity of the mad cow problem, with disastrous results. At a press conference at the height of the mad cow outbreak, a top British official downed a hamburger in front of reporters. Then he fed one to his kid for the cameras, too. In December, the president's spokesman confidently informed the press corps that, yes, the president would continue to eat beef. But in the case of England -- and now the US -- the reassurances were not supported by actual precautions. \nThere seem to be two problems right now. First, there seems to be a lack of regulatory oversight. The USDA advertises a whopping 30,000 cows a year are tested. It's impressive until you figure this means less than one in 1,000 total cows -- even though the government has promised money to beef up detection. \nThe other problem may be more difficult to tackle. Our country has an appetite for cheap meat. The industry resorts to strange practices, like feeding "protein" to cows, or plumping animals with large doses of hormones to increase their meat output. They also pump them full of antibiotics to protect them from their invariably unsanitary environment. Just this week, outbreaks of bird flu in Delaware caused the "destruction" of 12,000 birds. Such extreme conditions seem like ticking time bombs for the next biological crisis.\nWe'll find out soon whether this country puts its money where its mouth is.