Mad-cow case frustrates officials
May 4, 2006
Wall Street Journal
Scott Kilman
Government regulators closed a mad-cow-disease case in Alabama without learning the animal's origins and said that their fruitless search highlights the need for a proposed national livestock identification program.
Federal and state officials said yesterday that they spent several weeks following leads to 37 farms in a search aimed at preventing other cattle that might have been in contact with the infected cow from ending up in the human food supply. The fatal brain-wasting disease, known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, can trigger a rare neurological ailment in people who eat products from infected cattle.
The 10-year-old Alabama beef cow, which was diagnosed in March and didn't enter the food chain, was breeding stock and most likely contracted the disease by eating contaminated rations in the first year of its life. Investigators were trying to find the infected cow's birthplace to track down other cows that probably ate the same feed.
"If we had been dealing with a highly-contagious disease, we wouldn't have reacted quickly enough," said Ron Sparks, commissioner of the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries.
A proposed national livestock identification program is in danger of being bogged down by resistance from many rural interests, ranging from populist ranchers and Amish farmers to organic growers and rodeo competitors.
Many ranchers oppose an identification system out of fear that liability for food-borne disease might end up on their doorsteps. Others resent what they view as government intrusion. Jennifer Zeller, a 28-year-old semiprofessional barrel-racer, worries that she will have to tell the government whenever she takes her horse, Black, to competitions, because the horse would fall under the program as a farm animal. "It's asinine," she said. Opponents are launching Web sites and Texas officials have postponed plans to require that the owners of more than 200,000 premises register with the state.
The U.S. is far behind Canada, the European Union and other countries that have elaborate systems to trace sick animals in order to isolate disease outbreaks. The Alabama cow didn't have any identifying marks, such as a brand or tattoo.
The Bush administration didn't put the idea of a national identification system on the front burner until after the first U.S. case of mad-cow disease was discovered in December 2003 on a Washington state dairy farm. In that case, U.S. regulators were able to locate the sick animal's Alberta birthplace only because it carried an ear tag issued in Canada.
Since then, fights have erupted within the major farm groups and among states over whether the system should be mandatory, who should control the data and what sort of technology should be used. While the Agriculture Department is pushing to have a voluntary system in place by 2009, federal officials could impose mandatory rules if they deem that too few farms are participating.
