If this agent is truly indestructible and transmissible, and as long as the current cannibalistic practice of feeding animals to other animals continues, it will be passed on through the food chain and make its way to cats and other animals, then to cows, then from cows (and possibly pigs and sheep) on to humans. (53) Although chickens have not been found with the disease, they could still be spreading it. It has been shown that an intermediate host can pass on the disease without displaying symptoms itself (58). There also appears to be more than one BSE-derived prion strain that might infect humans; it is therefore possible that some patients with what was thought to be sporadic CJD (considered the usual, normally occurring form) may actually have the disease arising from BSE exposure (56).
It is believed that many of the cases assumed to be Alzheimer’s Disease may be the human form of BSE, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), which is difficult to distinguish from Alzheimer’s (27). The most common misdiagnosis of CJD is Alzheimer's disease. (53) Hidden cases of 1 to 13% are CJD. Laura Manuelidis, section chief of surgery in the neuropathology department at Yale University, conducted a 1989 study that found 13 percent of Alzheimer's patients actually had CJD. That percentage could add up to 120,000 or more CJD victims a year going undetected and not included in official statistics, instead of the 250 reported (53). And since the disease could occur at any time up to 40 years, the number of people affected in future years could be astronomical.
The U.S. public has not been able to depend on protection by its Government. A 10,000 pound batch of beef that included cuts and bones from the single infected dairy Holstein was distributed in December to six states, including California. (31) Officials with the FDA said they knew where most of the recalled meat and bones had been sold but maintained that information was considered proprietary and was not available to the public. "It is inexcusable that the USDA forbids California from informing consumers where the meat is," said Caroline Smith Dewaal, Director of Food Safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group. "This policy is proof positive that the USDA voluntary recall system is more concerned about protecting the beef industry than protecting the public health," she added. Dangerous toys and cars must be recalled in this country and the public informed, but this is not the case with potentially fatal food. Because Japan has refused to import American beef, as a result of the current finding of BSE, the U.S. Government has agreed to test every animal exported to that country, in an effort to win back this revenue. However, this Government has not agreed to test every animal meant for consumption by Americans. (32) Even though the U.S. Government knew that the epidemic in Britain was spread through the use of rendered animal feed, it took no measures to ensure it could not happen here, even when Britain withdrew its rendered animal feed policy in 1988 (53). This country chose not to learn from the experiences of Great Britain and other European countries. The Government and food industry are more interested in ‘crisis management’ and PR for their products. Their reaction to this situation has been obstruction, deception, denials, lies, procrastination, and rules full of loopholes (53).
Agriculture Secretary, Ann Veneman, has just announced additional safeguards against Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy in the U.S. (81). These include:
- Immediate ban on downer animals entering the human food chain.
- Cattle tested for BSE will no longer be marked as "inspected and passed" until confirmation is received that the animals have, in fact, tested negative for BSE.
- Skull, brain, trigeminal ganglia, eyes, vertebral column, spinal cord and dorsal root ganglia of cattle over 30 months of age and the small intestine of cattle of all ages, are prohibited from the human food supply.
- Immediate ban on air-injection stunning to ensure that portions of the brain are not dislocated into the tissues of the carcass.
- Prohibit use of mechanically separated meat in human food.
- Immediate implementation of a verifiable system of national animal identification.
