Mad Cow Disease

In the wake of the September 11, even PR Watch editors John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton came under attack as "terrorists" from ConsumerFreedom.org, lobbyist Rick Berman's front group for the alcohol, tobacco and restaurant industries.

A USDA-funded study by the industry-supported Harvard Center for Risk Analysis concludes that British mad cow disease is "very unlikely" to be a problem in the US. Unfortunately the study is seriously flawed because it is based on computer modeling, not real world testing. The US refuses to conduct an adequate number of tests on cattle to determine if British BSE exists in the US. Dr. John Collinge, a British BSE researcher, says that "after mandatory testing ...

The Denver Post reports that "Sixty-three elk exposed to chronic wasting disease (CWD) at a Del Norte ranch were exported to at least five states and three other Colorado ranches... Chronic wasting disease is ... related to mad cow disease. Unlike that disease, it has not been shown to infect humans." That's one spin to put on this issue, but the fact is that there is also no proof that CWD cannot infect humans, and laboratory evidence indicates that it might.

In an industry-friendly puff piece bragging that Minnesota is the nation's number one producer of farmed elk used for food and "health supplements," Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter Joy Powell makes no mention of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), the mad cow-type illness devastating elk and deer in western states and spreading across North America through virtually unregulated trafficking among game farms. CWD is already suspected in the cases of a number of young people in the US who have died in the last few years from CJD, the human equivalent of mad cow and mad elk disease.