Mad Cow Disease

First, the good news: Milk and milk products are considered by scientific authorities to be safe.

What is Mad Cow Disease?
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is a chronic, degenerative disease affecting the nervous system of cattle. It is always fatal. Since the disease was first diagnosed in Great Britain in 1986, there have been more than 178,000 cases worldwide. Over 95% of all BSE cases have occurred in the United Kingdom, although the disease has been found in countries throughout Europe. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) the first confirmed case of BSE in the United States BSE was found in Washington State in December of 2003.

How Does BSE Spread?
Epidemiological research suggests that BSE is spread from cattle to cattle through animal feed containing BSE contaminated meat and bone meal. There is evidence that it can also be spread maternally from cow to calf in vitro. There is no test to diagnose the disease in a live animal. Diagnosis is made by examining the brain tissue of a dead animal.

Is it contagious? Can I catch it?
BSE is a part of the family of diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). TSEs are characterized by sponge like holes in the brain. Other known TSEs include scrapie (which affects sheep and goats), transmissible mink encephalopathy, chronic wasting disease of deer and elk, and in humans, kuru and creutzfeldt-jakob disease (CJD).

In 1996, after studying the deaths of ten people with CJD, a UK Spongiform Encephalopathy committee announced the identification of a new variant form of CJD (vCJD). Research now suggests that BSE is highly likely to be the cause of this new form of CJD. Put another way, it is believed that by consuming the meat or bone from BSE infected cattle, humans could contract vCJD.

Can I get vCJD or BSE from yogurt and other dairy products?
According to the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC), http://www.cdc.gov/travel/diseases/madcow.htm studies have identified the presence of BSE in the brain, spinal cord, retina, dorsal root ganglia (nervous tissue located near the backbone), distal ileum, and bone marrow of cattle experimentally infected with BSE. The CDC states:

To reduce the possible current risk of acquiring vCJD from food, travelers to Europe should be advised to consider either 1) avoiding beef and beef products altogether or 2) selecting beef or beef products, such as solid pieces of meat (versus beef products such as burgers and sausages), that might have a reduced opportunity for contamination with tissues that might harbor the BSE agent. Milk and milk products from cows are not believed to pose any risk for transmitting the BSE agent.

The World Health Organization also considers milk and milk products to be safe. Other cattle derived products that are currently being reviewed include gelatin, collagen (used in cosmetics), and vaccines made from cattle blood. The World Health Organization considers tallow and gelatin safe if prepared by a manufacturing process that has been shown experimentally to inactivate the transmissible agent. 

What’s being done to prevent BSE in the US?
In 1989 the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) imposed import restrictions on live ruminants (cud chewing animals such as cattle, sheep, goats) and most ruminant products from the UK and other countries where BSE was diagnosed. In 1997 the US Food and Drug Administration issued a rule mandating the prohibition of ruminant feed containing animal protein derived from mammalian tissues. Although the rule has been in effect since 1997, it was reported by the NY Times in January of 2001 hat some companies involved in manufacturing animal feed are not complying with regulations meant to prevent the emergence and spread of mad cow disease in the United States.

Cows that supply our organic milk are raised on organic farms that have been certified to meet strict organic standards. Organic livestock standards mandate that 100% of the feed is organically raised, prohibit the use of antibiotics and hormones, and require access to outdoors. Another advantage of organic is the audit trail required under organic certification. Organic standards mandate a paper trail documenting all feeds given to organically grown livestock, as well as the management practices for the land they are raised on.  Traceability has been a key aspect of organic since the beginning.

The FDA has prohibited any dairy farmer—organic or non-organic—in the US from feeding ruminants animal protein derived from ruminants. In general our farmers feed their cows hay and chopped fermented hay (haylage), corn, corn silage (chopped and fermented whole corn plants), soy and soy by-products and grains.

The rapid development of the disease in the UK was a result of a bad policy that allowed the feeding of rendered ruminants to ruminants. In addition, many modern day farming systems create an environment that weakens cows and creates a breeding ground for disease. We believe that the small family farm in comparison to the large, concentrated animal farming operation (CAFO) is generally better for several reasons:

• Concentrating animals in a confined area concentrates the animal waste products posing an environmental and health threat to nearby communities. In 1995 a North Carolina spill of over 30 million gallons of animal waste from a concentrated hog operation contaminated rivers killing millions of fish and causing a human health danger.
  

• Animals receive personal attention and live longer lives under less stress.
  

• More small farms rather than fewer large ones can be better for rural communities, providing a more diverse employer base with more opportunities for families to maintain business and land ownership.

Brian Halweil and Dani Nierenberg of the Washington, D.C. based Worldwatch Institute wrote in the March 2001 Green Business News:

The modern animal farm not only allows, but also paves the way for the outbreak of disease. We cram thousands of genetically uniform animals into unhygienic warehouses, generating a virtual frat party for microbes. We recycle animal manure and slaughterhouse waste as feed. We process meat at breakneck speed in the presence of blood, feces, and other contagion… The irony is that this model of food production – designed to put economic gain ahead of good animal health- doesn’t make any economic sense in the long term. Mad cow alone has already cost Britain more than $1 billion and sapped $5.6 million from EU coffers.

We support a smaller scale, sustainable agricultural system that is ecologically sound, economically viable, socially just and humane. We see organic as the path to this sustainable system and are working hard to increase our use of organic milk and other organically grown ingredients.

In the meantime, we will continue to watch national and global developments of BSE and keep you posted.

For more information on BSE:

Organic Valley http://organicvalley.com/faq/search.php?search=Mad+Cow

Organic Consumers Association http://organicconsumers.org/madcow.htm

Why ORGANIC BEEF is a smart choice http://www.ota.com/organic/foodsafety/OrganicBeef.html