When Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell addressed the British House of Commons on March 20, 1996, he was ashen-faced for good reason. Like numerous other government representatives, for years Dorrell had been reassuring the nervous British public that the beef in their hamburgers, kidney pies and Sunday roasts was as safe and sound as the Pound sterling. Dorrell had also steadfastly insisted that no connection existed between any human illness and Mad Cow Disease, the incurable dementia that has killed 160,000 British cows since 1985. On March 20, however, a somber Secretary Dorrell faced the legislative body, and the nation, and proceeded to eat his very words. A government advisory committee, he explained, had concluded that Mad Cow Disease was indeed the "most likely" cause of a recent outbreak in young British adults of a similar fatal disease.[1]

The announcement was an embarrassing about-face for the government. It stunned and angered the British people, and sent shockwaves through Europe and around the world. Beef went untouched in supermarkets by alarmed shoppers, and the chairman of the government’s advisory committee said that victims could number in the hundreds of thousands.[2]

In the US, government and livestock industry representatives did their best to allay public concern, insisting that domestic herds were free of Mad Cow Disease (known formally as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE) and that adequate safeguards were in place. Few of these reports mentioned, however, that the very practice that caused and fostered Mad Cow Disease in England—namely feeding cattle the processed remains of other livestock—is altogether commonplace on American farms. In 1989 for example, approximately 800 million pounds of slaughterhouse remains were fed to US beef and dairy cows as an inexpensive “protein supplement” designed to boost milk and meat production.[3] Safety concerns aside, forcing cows and other livestock to eat animal remains makes natural herbivores into carnivores and often into cannibals. Unless the US government acts swiftly to outlaw this practice, many now believe that a major outbreak of Mad Cow Disease in the US is possible, even likely.[4]

In an international news release issued in March, EarthSave joined with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) in Washington, DC to draw attention to Mad Cow Disease. The release also sought to counter the mistaken, albeit widely reported notion that beef can be safe if only we somehow purge the meat supply of contaminants and contagions, such as the infectious agent responsible for Mad Cow Disease. Safe? The fact is, even when cows are healthy, eating them isn’t. According to numerous studies by noted researchers, too many people worldwide are already suffering and dying from deadly substances found in beef, as well as in poultry, pork, fish and dairy products. These ingredients, including saturated fat and cholesterol, occur almost exclusively in foods of animal origin, and have been implicated time and again in the epidemic of heart disease, certain cancers, diabetes and obesity that plague Western nations.

To stimulate discussion in the heart of America’s cattle country on Mad Cow Disease and meat consumption’s human toll, EarthSave and PCRM attempted to place in the Des Moines [Iowa] Register newspaper an ad discussing this situation. The newspaper refused to print the $1,000 ad, however, deeming it unsuitable for their publication. Did the fact that the Register accepts great sums of advertising dollars each year from the meat industry influence the publisher's decision?

While the ad didn't play in Des Moines, it did have a far-reaching effect. Columnist Colman McCarthy, a member of EarthSave’s Board of Advisors, responded with a column entitled “Eating Cows is the Real Madness” that appeared in the Washington Post and the International Herald Tribune, newspapers with a combined readership of well over one million. In his column, McCarthy wrote, “If Mad Cow Disease can cause an international panic and political heartburn in the British Parliament because 10 Brits may possibly have contracted a rare nerve disorder from tainted beef, it should follow that the heavens themselves would be shaken by humanity’s outcry over the proven deadliness of meat that’s available everywhere.”[5]

Another mainstream newspaper was also having a beef with beef. “Meat-eaters learned more in the past week than they ever wanted to know about the origins of a hamburger," the Wall Street Journal reported. "The British experience of Mad Cow Disease—and its links to commercial livestock feed and human illness—forever dispelled the image of contented cows grazing on sweet grass and hay. Modern agribusiness isn't like ‘Green Acres’... Most Americans are unfamiliar with farm life and were shocked to find that modern agriculture had made cattle into carnivores [and cannibals], fattened on meat and bone from sheep and cows.”[6]

EarthSave’s message took center stage when the Oprah Winfrey Show tackled Mad Cow Disease in mid-April. EarthSave Board member Howard Lyman, a former cattle rancher turned vegetarian and now director of the Humane Society’s Eating With Conscience Campaign, was a featured guest. Lyman shared his expertise on Mad Cow Disease and the horrors of modern animal food production. Winfrey and the audience were visibly appalled when Lyman revealed that feeding cows the rendered remains of other cows is standard practice. This disclosure thrust Gary Weber, the spokesperson representing the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), into the unenviable position of defending the ghastly practice. Clearly it was a challenge that Weber was unable to meet to the audience’s or the host’s satisfaction—their mouths were agape for all of America to see.

An uproar ensued. “Cattle prices sank in the belief that consumers watching the popular nationwide program would cut back on beef purchases,” said the Chicago Tribune.[7] The beef industry cried foul, attacking Winfrey for biased coverage. Winfrey fought back. “I asked questions that I think the American people deserve to have answered in light of what is happening in Britain,” she said. “I am speaking as one concerned consumer for millions of others. Cows eating cows is alarming. Americans needed and wanted to know that. I certainly did.”[8]

This was not what the beef industry wanted to hear. They pressed for another show, and one was hurriedly scheduled for the following week. The show was decidedly one-sided. No one but the Cattlemen’s Weber (and briefly a rancher from Iowa) spoke during the segment devoted to beef safety. When pressed by Winfrey, Weber did finally acknowledge that feeding cows to cows is a routine practice in the US. He justified the practice by saying that it makes good scientific sense and is a wise use of “high-value nutrients” that would otherwise be “wasted.” Weber offered that, in order to protect public safety, American feedlot operators and ranchers say they’ve voluntarily stopped feeding cows to cows. But Webber gave no explanation why this important consumer safeguard was not implemented in 1989, as it was in England, and Oprah didn’t ask.

Why were no dissenting voices allowed on the second Oprah show devoted to Mad Cow Disease? To their credit, the show’s producers contacted both the Humane Society’s Michael Fox, PhD, and PCRM’s Neal Barnard, MD, about appearing. But in the end, the NCBA stole the show. What happened behind the scenes to make the Oprah Winfrey Show cowtow to the cow industry? We don’t know for certain, but according to a NCBA press release, “NCBA’s staff negotiated extensively with the Oprah show about a return appearance. NCBA agreed to appear only if the segment was unedited, and without opposing spokespersons.”[9]

Meanwhile in England, citizens found themselves wondering whether their government had for years placed the financial interests of the influential livestock industry ahead of public health. As the New York Times observed, Secretary Dorrell's March bombshell precipitated “...a total lack of confidence in what the Government or its scientific experts were saying. The suspicions that had been building up for six years suddenly reached a critical mass and the result was a spontaneous boycott.”[10]

This crisis of public confidence was no great surprise given the extremes to which the British government has gone for roughly a decade to manipulate the evidence in order to quell public anxiety over Mad Cow Disease.[11] At the very outset, the Department of Health delayed for 11 months the announcement in 1986 confirming the first case of Mad Cow Disease. When it ultimately appeared, it did so in a notice tucked away in a veterinary journal.[12] In a 1990 press stunt, the British Minister of Agriculture John Gummer appeared on television munching hamburgers with his four-year-old daughter.[13] Next, despite evidence that everything from household cats to zoo animals had contracted fatal dementia by eating infected cattle products, the government faithfully insisted that cattle represented a “dead-end host,” meaning the disease would stop at cows and not infect other species.[14] Finally, and probably worst of all, though it was suspected early on that feed laced with infected sheep and cattle was behind Mad Cow Disease, the British government waited until 1989 to prohibit the practice.[15]

“The [Mad Cow Disease] episode has made clear the problems that arise as a result of the secretive and inadequate way in which Government ministers garner their expert advice,” editorialized the British medical journal the Lancet. “Expert committees—appointed by ministers—meet in private. The evidence that they consider is kept under wraps. The conclusions they reach and the recommendations they make are made public in short, bald statements.”[16] Richard Lacey, PhD, a leading British microbiologist, is just as uncomplimentary, calling the government’s handling of Mad Cow Disease, “...one of the most disgraceful episodes in this country’s history.”[17]

The US government has been equally tight-lipped on the subject of Mad Cow Disease, says investigative reporter John Stauber, author of Toxic Sludge is Good For You, an exposé of the public relations industry. “For seven years the USDA, the FDA and the multi-billion dollar animal livestock industry have cooperated in a public relations cover-up of potentially massive health risks to animals and people in the US,” Stauber says. “The government sought to protect the economic interests of the powerful meat and animal feed industries, while denying the existence of risks to animals and humans."[18]

Such behavior is perhaps all-too predictable given that in both England and the US, the departments of agriculture are charged with dual missions that are routinely contradictory—to promote the sale of animal products as a means of maximizing farm income, and to safeguard public health. This appearance of conflict of interest underlies the British public’s loss of faith in their government. According to the Lancet, “The unfolding story...underscores the weaknesses of...allowing one Government department to protect the interests of both the food consumers and the farming industry.”[19]

The events, disclosures and lessons learned since March 20 should serve as a wake-up call for governments in Europe, North America and beyond. Rather than spending billions of dollars to restore "consumer confidence" in beef (as the British government is now prepared to do), governments could best fulfill their responsibility to safeguard public health by beginning to educate citizens about the inherent dangers of an animal-based diet and the many benefits of eating a plant-centered diet. Governments would also be well-advised to treat this critical crossroads as an opportunity to begin shifting their farm economies toward more benign enterprises. Such transformations could be modeled on nations now shifting away from military to civilian industries.

It's too early to predict what, if any, lasting effect the events of Spring 1996 will have on consumers’ food choices. Will shoppers begin to shift to a plant-based diet? Or will they return to beef if Mad Cow Disease fades from the headlines? Perhaps they will shift away from beef in favor of more pork, fowl, and fish, until they learn that, like cows, these animals are also fed massive quantities of rendered meat, blood meal, bone meal and other animal byproducts.

Whatever happens, make no bones about it: Mad Cow Disease is a horrible affliction that may one day reach epidemic proportions among humans. Only time will tell. (Four new suspected cases of the human form of Mad Cow Disease have been reported in England in late April, including a 15-year-old girl, believed to be the youngest victim of the disease ever recorded.)[20]

In the meantime, the ill-effects of a meat-based diet are already epidemic. Such a diet is clearly unnecessary, inherently unhealthy and environmentally destructive. Study after study clearly demonstrate that diets based on foods of plant origin enrich and extend life, and that beef and other animal products, even when untainted, help clog arteries, hospital beds and cemeteries throughout the world. Given the overwhelming scientific evidence, eating an animal-centered diet is indeed madness.

You Can Help

Mad Cow Disease has shown an uncanny ability to jump from species to species. One immediate step we can take to reduce the odds of this deadly dementia threatening cows and humans in North America is to end the practice of feeding cows to cows. England banned the practice in 1989, and the World Health Organization is now endorsing a ban for all countries.[21]

Write to Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman (c/o USDA, 14th Street and Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC, 20250), Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler (5600 Fishers Lane, Rockville, MD, 20857) and your Congressional representatives. Tell them that the beef industry’s proposed voluntary ban on feeding cows to cows just won’t do, and ask them to immediately impose and enforce a mandatory ban on this practice in the US.

Want to do more? Write a letter-to-the-editor for your local newspaper. Inform your friends and family now. As British microbiologist Richard Lacey, PhD, counsels, “The simple and safest answer is to stop eating animals. In the absence of any accurate, reliable or truthful information [about Mad Cow Disease] coming from ‘the experts’, the choice has to be yours.”[22]

References

[1] John Darnton, "Britain Admits Link of 'Mad-Cow' Disease to Humans," New York Times, March 21, 1996.

[2] John Darnton, "For the Tories, a Prime Disaster," New York Times, March 27, 1996.

[3] 1991 USDA report "BSE Rendering Policy" cited in John Stauber, "Apocalypse Cow," PR Watch, First Quarter 1996, Vol 3, No. 1. The report stated, "the US beef and dairy industries have fed meat and bone meal for at least 10 years...there were approximately 7.9 billion pounds of meat and bone meal, blood meal and feather meal produced in 1989." Of that, 34 percent went to feed poultry, 20 percent for swine feed and 10 percent to the beef and dairy industry. The remainder went into pet food. "BSE crisis tests arguments for science-based decisions," Feedstuffs, April 8, 1996. "Of the ruminant protein available in the US, it is estimated that 13 percent is fed back to cattle, 34 percent goes into swine diets, 34 percent goes into pet food, 17 percent into poultry diets and 2 percent falls into a miscellaneous category."

[4] John Stauber, "Apocalypse Cow," PR Watch, First Quarter 1996, Vol 3, No. 1.

[5] Colman McCarthy, "Eating Cows is the Real Madness," Washington Post, April 9, 1996.

[6] Marilyn Chase, "Health Journal: U.S. Groups Move To Make Cattle Feed Safe for Food Chain," Wall Street Journal, April 1, 1996.

[7] George Gunset, "Oprah Airs Beef Fears," Chicago Tribune, April 17, 1996.

[8] Ibid.

[9] National Cattlemen's Beef Association Press Release, April 24, 1996.

[10] New York Times, April 3, 1996.

[11] John Darnton, "The Logic of the 'Mad Cow' Scare," New York Times, March 31, 1996.

[12] Charles Oulton, "Fever of fear on the farm sweeping across Britain," London Observer Service, Nov 4, 1995.

[13] John Darnton, "Mad-cow disease spoils appetite of British beef-eaters," New York Times, Jan 12, 1996.

[14] Joel Bleifuss, "A New Plague?", In These Times, May 17, 1993.

[15] Stephanie Strom, "'Mad Cow Disease' Threatens the Farming Life," New York Times, March 25, 1996.

[16] Lancet 1996 April 6; 347(9006):915-925, 945-8, 967.

[17] John Stauber, "Apocalypse Cow," PR Watch, First Quarter 1996, Vol 3, No. 1.

[18] John Stauber, "Apocalypse Cow," PR Watch, First Quarter 1996, Vol 3, No. 1.

[19] John Stauber, "Apocalypse Cow," PR Watch, First Quarter 1996, Vol 3, No. 1.

[20] Lancet 1996 April 6; 347(9006):915-925, 945-8, 967.

[21] Lawrence K. Altman, "W.H.O. Seeks Barriers Against Cow Disease," New York Times, April 4, 1996.

[22] Richard Lacey, "How Now Mad Cow?", unpublished paper, 1995.