Deseret News Publishing Co. and AP
Published 14 June, © 1996WASHINGTON (AP) -- An indictment against a California agribusiness company says its former chief lobbyist gave a $2,400 luggage set, trips to Greece, $5000 in illegal campaign contributions, tennis tickets and limos worth $2300, meals, crystal and artwork to former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy. Espy resigned as head of USDA at the end of 1994 because of the investigation.
The USDA frequently reassured consumers about US beef safety during Espy's tenure and is the lead agency investigating the safety of the $40 billion dollar beef industry.
The federal indictment Thursday against Sun-Diamond Growers of California says Espy's girlfriend, who was not named, and his brother, Henry, also benefited from the company's largesse from early 1993 through March 1994.
The nine-count indictment says Mike Espy received $9,000 in gratuities, including $3,100 for his girlfriend to accompany him to a conference in Greece. The company also illegally contributed $5,000 to help retire Henry Espy's debts from a failed congressional race, the indictment says.
The indictment is the first in the investigation by Smaltz to allege that the former Clinton Cabinet member received gifts from anyone. The investigation was sparked by such allegations, but earlier indictments focused on alleged fraud by farmers and illegal corporate contributions to retire Henry Espy's campaign debts.
The indictment alleges five counts of illegal gratuities and wire fraud, each punishable by fines of up to $500,000, and four counts of illegal campaign contributions punishable by fines of up to $200,000 each.
the company which grows figs, walnuts, hazelnuts, prunes, and raisins, had combined 1995 sales of $672 million. It received money from USDA under an exports program. It also sought to slow a ban on methyl bromide, a fungicide implicated in ozone thinnning and testicular cancer.
Attorneys for the company and the former lobbyist, Richard Douglas, disputed the charges. Only the company was charged, but Douglas' attorney called the indictment an attempt by independent counsel Donald C. Smaltz to smear Douglas and Sun-Diamond.''Sun-Diamond Growers categorically denies all charges brought by the independent counsel,'' the company's attorney, Eric Bloom, said.
As European officials scrambled to reassure consumers about the safety of beef, U.S. industry leaders met in Maryland Friday to talk about ``mad cow'' disease and its link to a fatal illness in humans.
Officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration called the meeting with meat industry leaders to discuss an announcement by the British government Wednesday that linked bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The meeting was closed to the public.
Erica Smith, a spokeswoman for the National Meat Association in Oakland, Calif., said the meeting was called to address concerns about the European developments. On Wednesday, the British government acknowledged that 10 people who died of the incurable brain disease probably got it after eating infected beef. ``There were no real decisions made or conclusions reached,'' Smith said.
Smith would not comment on whether beef industry leaders suggested altering feeding practices that some say contributed to the cattle disease in Europe. Researchers believe cattle contracted the disease after eating feed supplements containing tissue from sheep infected with a similar disease called scrapie. ``All we're saying right now is we're supporting what the USDA has put out,'' said Smith, whose group represents 600 meatpackers and slaughterhouses in this country.
U.S. meat inspectors have tested more than 2,600 U.S. cattle since `mad cow disease' began spreading in British herds in the late 1980s, a state cattle industry leader said Monday. And so far, no trace of the disease has appeared in this country, said R.F. Hauser, executive director of the Wisconsin Cattlemen's Association. ``We have been on the lookout for it in this country,'' he said. But, ``our food system is definitely clear of it.'' Hauser said the industry wants to avoid a problem similar to the historic epidemic of hoof and mouth disease -- a contagious viral infection that can be passed to humans. Outbreaks of the disease forced the slaughter of thousands of cattle in the 1940s, Hauser said. ``We just don't want our animal population infected'' with anything, he said.
Jacque Knight, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service, said more than 90 percent of cattle rejected for slaughter will now be tested for a variety of illnesses. Federal inspectors already check all cattle brought to slaughterhouses for signs of neurological disorders including rabies, milk fever and mad cow disease. Animals exhibiting any symptoms cannot be used for human food.
LONDON - Senior Cabinet ministers tried to suppress the public alert about the possible spread of ''mad cow'' disease to humans and downplayed the alarming new evidence from their chief scientific advisers, the London Observer has learned.
New measures to protect the public from infected meat have not been implemented, despite repeated ministerial assurances this past week. At emergency meetings early in the week, Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine and Conservative Party Chairman Brian Mawhinney, according to sources, led a group of ministers arguing strongly against going public about the suspected link between BSE-infected meat and a new strain of the human brain affliction Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.
Professor John Pattison, head of the BSE advisory committee, was summoned to a meeting chaired by John Major before Wednesday's Cabinet and subjected to two hours of grueling questions by skeptical ministers. According to well-placed Whitehall sources, they argued that because the number of CJD victims was not rising, the scientists might have got it wrong. They were finally overruled by Health Minister Stephen Dorrell and Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg who argued that the public health risks called for an immediate statement.
''There was a degree of reluctance with going public,'' said one senior source. ''We had some quite awkward meetings with ministers trying to tell Pattison he had got it wrong. They wanted to test whether the government really had to act on the scientists' advice.''
The revelations of an 11th-hour attempt at a cover-up will undermine further the government's battered reputation over its handling of the BSE epidemic. The crisis will escalate this week with the European Commission set to recommend a Europe-wide ban on ''unsafe'' beef products and pressure mounting for the slaughter of at least a quarter of the 11 million-strong national herd.
WASHINGTON (Bloomberg) -- Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said the U.S. could help rebuild the United Kingdom's cattle herd if some or all of the animals are eventually destroyed to contain "mad cow" disease.
"I think it would be possible for us to help," Glickman said in a brief interview. "It would be done mostly by U.S. cattlemen, their organization."
Glickman's comments, though, came before U.K. officials said they saw no reason to order the slaughter of any of Britain's 11 million cattle stock. The announcement, made after government officials met with scientific advisers, confounded expectations that some of the nation's herd would be destroyed. Separately, the European Union's Agricultural Commissioner, Franz Fischler, is scheduled to report at 5:30 p.m. today in Brussels on whether the EU plans to recommend tighter controls on British beef, including the possibility of an EU-wide ban. A group of EU veterinary scientists recommended tighter curbs on Friday, without spelling out details. In France today, a herd of cattle was slaughtered after one steer was found to have the disease, Associated Press reported.
The U.K. government said last week that 10 people who died of an incurable brain disorder called Creuzfeldt-Jakob disease probably got it after eating beef infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.
Glickman said the idea of U.S. help to repopulate British cattle herds "hasn't been discussed" at the USDA.
He said if herds were destroyed, "they'd need everybody's help, including ours. We want to make sure they get over their problems."
The U.S. is free of BSE, or mad cow disease, and hasn't imported processed beef or cattle from the U.K. since 1989.
Of 499 cattle imported from Britain between 1981 and 1989, the USDA said 109 animals are still alive and are monitored regularly. No traces of BSE have been found.
Many U.S. analysts said that if the U.K. had decided to destroy some or all of the country's herd, beef imports from New Zealand, Australia and Argentina could soar.
The European Union has blocked U.S. beef imports since 1989 because they are treated with hormones. The ban has cost the U.S. cattle industry about $100 million a year or more in lost exports, the USDA said.
The U.S. has filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization to overturn the ban as an unfair trade barrier. A EU scientific panel last December concluded U.S. beef treated with hormones poses no threat to human health.
Even before today's announcement in London, analysts voiced skepticism that British officials would order a total slaughter. "I doubt very strenuously that the U.K. would liquidate their entire herd" because of the enormous expense, said Chuck Levitt, livestock analyst at Alaron Trading Corp., in Chicago.
Though if herds were fully destroyed, "they might ask us" to help repopulate foundation herds, Levitt said.
The U.S. has a record 103 million head of cattle on hand, up 1 percent from last year. Of that number, about 20 million are animals of 500 pounds or more meant for beef or milk cow replacement.
Levitt said he thought it was more likely that the British government would begin an education campaign to promote U.S. beef as safe to eat, he said.
U.K. analysts said the cost of slaughtering all or part of the U.K.'s 11 million cattle herd to contain "mad cow" disease would widen the government's budget deficit.
In addition, it could increase retail price inflation, boost the cost of other meat products and imported beef and milk, hurt economic growth and trade and curb plans to cut taxes.
"It would have quite a detrimental effect on trade, growth and the deficit" if the entire stock of 11 million cattle is put down," said David Mackie, a U.K. economist at JP Morgan in London.
If the government had opted for slaughtering all cattle over the age of three years, amounting to some 4.5 million cows, the cost to the government of compensating farmers could have run to between 6 billion and 10 billion pounds (US $9.1 billion and $15.2 billion), estimates James McKay, a U.K. economist at PaineWebber.
However, in the case of the slaughtering of all 11 million heads of cattle, "you have exposure of up to 20 billion pounds," or about $30.4 billion, said McKay.
Economists also pointed out that a U.K. decision to slaughter its cattle could have other fallout: Increased unemployment benefit costs to workers who'd lose their jobs in the 500,000-worker dairy and beef industries could push up government spending and the deficit.
The European Union could decide to compensate the U.K. if an all-out ban on British beef is announced.
"If the European Union helps out on compensation, the impact ... would be lessened," said James Barty, the chief U.K. economist at Deutsche Morgan Grenfell.
A possible European Union ban on British beef imports is seen costing some 4 billion pounds in export income, or $6 billion, said McKay at PaineWebber.
WASHINGTON, March 29, 1996--The United States Department of Agriculture and the United States Public Health Service today expressed support for the voluntary measures announced by the livestock industry in the ongoing effort to ensure the United States remains free of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or BSE.
USDA has been monitoring for BSE for 10 years and has never identified a single case. In addition, no beef from England has been imported into the United States since at least 1985. The measures announced today will provide an additional level of assurance that the United States remains free of BSE.
Both agencies stressed that the additional measures announced today were designed to provide the American public with the continued assurance that the U.S. food supply remains among the safest in the world.
The industry announcement includes a voluntary program to ensure that ruminant products are not used in ruminant feed. Ruminant animals include cattle, sheep, and goats.
In addition, USDA and United States Public Health Service are undertaking a number of initiatives, including:
In addition, the CDC emphasized that since they began monitoring Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease mortality data, the number of cases in the United States has remained stable at about one case per million per year since 1979. The age distribution of these cases has not changed significantly in contrast to those recently described in Great Britain.
NOTE: USDA news release and media advisories are available on the Internet.
BRITAIN cannot be trusted to carry out its cattle cull without independent checks by European officials, Karel Pinxten, Belgium's agriculture minister, said yesterday.In an interview with the French newspaper Le Soir, Pinxten said: "I don't want to depend on checks made by British veterinarians. You cannot forget that this disease has been around for 10 years. For all this time there have been checks. What makes me think that one day things will change? Nothing."
Pinxten's remarks came as it emerged that many European countries have failed to identify hundreds of cases of their "mad cow" disease over the past five years, fuelling concern of a widespread cover-up in reporting BSE abroad.
An international team of scientists has estimated that there should have been 1,668 cases of BSE reported in European Union countries after the export of 57,900 British breeding cattle [[or 2.8%]] between 1985 and 1990. In fact, the total was just 29. The case of the 1668 Missing Cases of BSE
The scientists are preparing a report to be published later this year which will identify France and Portugal as being at the highest risk from indigenous BSE.
Their report says the figures show that "not many countries can maintain claims that they have never had BSE or, at least, that they had never imported it . . . these results clearly indicate that BSE cannot be considered a British problem alone".
Bram Schreuder, one of the authors of the report and Holland's leading expert on BSE, said the chances of some countries having indigenous BSE was very realistic. "There is a risk that if a local rendering plant is not fully effective, countries that were continuing to feed meat and bonemeal to cattle were creating their own indigenous BSE," he said.
Although Britain banned the manufacture of meat and bonemeal made from cattle remains in 1988, many other countries in Europe continued the practice until recently.
Officially there have been 413 cases of BSE in the world outside Britain, of which 384 were in cattle born outside the United Kingdom. Switzerland has reported 218 cases, Portugal 39 (six of which were imported from Britain) and France 20. Although France and other countries with BSE have blamed imported British meat and bonemeal for their infected cattle, it appears possible that feed made in those countries had become infected with recycled cattle remains.
[[The US didn't ban imports until 1989. Assuming 500 were imported '85 to '90, this gives 500 *2.9% =14 US cows with the British version of BSE. -- webmaster]]
Excerpts from an article by Michael Greger
Are Americans infected by mad cow disease? With 100,000,000 cattle and the highest per capita beef consumption in the world. Traditional bovine spongiform encephalopathy hit North America in 1993. An infected dairy cow, one of many imported from the UK before both Canada and the US banned the importation of British cattle, was found on a ranch in Alberta, Canada. Of the 471 British cattle imported into the US before the 1989 ban, 188 of them have been melted down into lard and protein (presumably for other livestock) and at least 66 are untraceable.
One of the imported bulls slaughtered had a "central nervous system abnormality" of which the USDA reported, "There is no definitive evidence that [the bull] either had or did not have BSE."Although the importation of British beef has been banned from the US for a decade due to an unrelated disease, over 13 tons of meat and bone meal, (which, if you remember, was implicated in the birth of the British epidemic) has come into the US from England between 1982 and 1992.
Conditions conducive to a BSE outbreak include the presence of scrapie in 39 states.The 40-year USDA Scrapie Eradication Program has been deemed a "dismal failure" and even implicated in the recent rise of scrapie-infected sheep. Admitting defeat, the USDA scrapped the Scrapie Eradication Program 2 years ago and replaced it with an "entirely voluntary" control program.
Since 1947 there have been 25 outbreaks of Mink Spongiform Encephalopathy (also called TME) on US fur farms. This perplexed researchers who were unable to orally infect mink with scrapie-infected sheep brains. A clue came in 1985 when TME wiped out a population of minks in Wisconsin who hadn't eaten any sheep.[35] Their diet consisted almost exclusively of dairy cattle called "downers," an industry term describing cows who fall down and are too sick to get up.
The possibility, then, that US dairy herds were harboring some form of BSE intrigued University of Wisconsin veterinary scientist Richard Marsh. To test this, Marsh inoculated US cattle with the infected mink brains.[49] As predicted, they died. And when he fed the brains of these cows to healthy mink they too died of a spongiform encephalopathy providing what he thought was the missing link. Marsh hypothesized that the proposed BSE strain indigenous to the US manifests itself as more of a downed cow disease than a mad cow disease.
With about 300,000 cows going down for unexplainable reasons every year in the US, this has frightening implications on a grand scale. The critical experiment came when Marsh inoculated scrapie infected sheep brain into US cattle. If you do this in England the cows go mad, twitching and kicking into a rabid frenzy. But in America, cows instead stagger to their deaths like downer cows do, supporting the notion that a form of BSE is already here in the United States.
By 1990 the USDA had 60 labs monitoring our country's cattle herds for BSE. In 1991 APHIS, the governmental agency which ensures the health of the nation's livestock, concluded that the "possibility of BSE appearing in US cattle is extremely low."The assumption made by APHIS, however, was that "scrapie infected sheep were the only source of the BSE agent." This is certainly questionable in light of the evidence for an indigenous BSE agent. Likewise, the USDA surveillance program (described as slow, clumsy, and ineffective) began looking for the rabies-like symptoms of the traditional British strain of BSE[52], in effect ignoring Marsh's findings.]
In June 1992 a USDA consultant group continued to disregard the available evidence, deciding that changes in the research program to accommodate the possibility that BSE was already present in the US were "not appropriate at this time." No surprise really, when one realizes that this panel included representatives of the National Milk Producers Federation, the National Renderers Association, The American Sheep Industry Association and the National Cattleman's Association.] According to newspaper reports last year the USDA has finally backed down and started testing downer cows, but some doubt their resolve.
The USDA knows all too well that a positive diagnosis in a single cow could put the entire dairy and beef export business in jeopardy In Wisconsin alone this would mean a loss of a half a billion dollars a year. With scientists like Marsh saying "The exact same thing could happen over here as happened in Britain,"and with beef consumption already at a thirty-year low, the USDA is justifiably worried. There was even a complaint filed recently with the FDA from a woman with CJD who had been taking a dietary supplement containing bovine tissue.
Like England, we have been feeding dead cows to living cows for decades. In fact, here in the US a minimum of 14% of the remains of rendered cattle is fed to other cows (another 50% goes on the pig and chicken menu). Partly because of this, the USDA has conceded that "the potential risk of amplification of the BSE agent is much greater in the United States" than in Britain. To make things worse, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of animal protein in commercial dairy feed since 1987. The recent introduction of Bovine Growth Hormone will only increase the need for rendered animal proteins in the rations of dairy cattle, of whom we eat 2.6 billion pounds annually.
The Foundation on Economic Trends a national consumer advocacy organization, petitioned the FDA in June 1993 to ban all feeding of ruminants (cows, sheep...) to other ruminants, because they felt that transmissible spongiform encephalopathies "pose a serious potential health risk to both the nation's cattle herds and meat-eating consumers." Although the European Commonwealth took this advice four years ago, the U.S. Government still refuses.
According to top encephalopathy expert Joseph Gibbs, one out of every million cattle naturally develops BSE. And because evidence exists that prions are able to adapt to their hosts and become more virulent with time, it is, in my view, absolutely necessary to enact the ban and stop recycling this disease through US cattle. To make things worse, a preliminary 1989 study at the University of Pennsylvania showed that over 5% of patients diagnosed with Alzheimers are actually dying from a human spongiform encephalopathy. That means that maybe 200,000 people in the US are already dying from BSE each year.
Why doesn't the government enact the ban? An answer can be found in a 1991 internal USDA document entitled "BSE: Rendering policy" which was recently retrieved through the Freedom of Information Act.] It weighed the costs and benefits of a number of preventative measures including a total ruminant to ruminant ban.The supporters of this option felt that this minimized the risk to public health.
APHIS, however, goes on to explain that the "disadvantage" of this approach is "that the cost to the livestock and rendering industries would be substantial" and that such a policy "could pose major problems for the US livestock and rendering industries."After all, the rendering, feed, and cattle industries do rack up annual sales of only $1.2 billion, $20 billion, and $60 billion, respectively. And since when does public health ever take precedence over corporate interests anyway? I just hope that, in the end, the profits are worth it.
April 3, 1996 ... Editorial.. NY Times Stealth Attack on U.S. Food Safety
An 11th-hour amendment, sneaked into the farm bill last week, threatens to complicate and clog the nation's meat and poultry safety system. The White House opposes the amendment but is unlikely to veto the bill, which has many admirable provisions. Given the controversies over possibly contaminated beef in England and the rejection of U.S. chickens in Russia because of high salmonella levels, though, this is no time to trifle with food safety. Congress should correct its own mistake.
Pushed at the last minute by Representative Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, and inserted in conference committee, the amendment would establish a Safe Meat and Poultry Inspection panel -- a part-time, voluntary group of seven experts drawn mainly from the food, meat and poultry science fields. Those experts generally have more training in animal health than in human health. Protecting human health is the main purpose of meat and poultry inspections.
The panel would evaluate any rule or procedure related to meat inspection suggested by the Agriculture Department's under secretary for food safety. The panel would not have veto power, but the extra layer of review would surely slow down an inspection process that already suffers from inadequate resources. It is also likely to complicate plans to modernize inspections, including sophisticated testing for microbes and other new controls. Modernization was recommended by the National Academy of Sciences a decade ago and has the support of industry and consumer groups.
Some after-the-fact counterattacks are under way. Two Democratic Representatives, Nita Lowey of New York and Richard Durbin of Illinois, will push the House Appropriations Committee not to finance the new safety panel. The Administration, expressing "serious concerns" about the panel, will try to have it repealed, possibly through the process of making technical corrections on the bill. Another way to fix the damage would be a new law to make a majority of panel members experts in public health and narrow the scope of their authority.
These measures are late, but they are being discussed openly, which is more than can be said about Congress's effort to fiddle with food safety.
May 16, 1996 New England Journal of Medicine editorial by Martin J. Blaser, M.D. How Safe Is Our Food?
Lessons from an Outbreak of Salmonellosis
The microbiologic hazards of food present an issue of increasing concern. In the not-so-distant past, most food was produced and consumed locally. In the 20th century, however, the production and distribution of food in the developed countries of the world have become increasingly industrialized. Small farms are being replaced by feedlots, local dairies supplanted by industrial plants, farmers' markets displaced by supermarkets, and local restaurants edged out by huge national chains. The relations among agricultural workers, food processors, and distributors have become increasingly complex and distant
The food chain and steps in food production are being varied in ways that stretch the imagination. From an economic standpoint, modern agribusiness offers many benefits, including the wide choices and apparently low costs of food available to the consumer. The development of national standards has improved food safety, yet certain microbial pathogens persist, the scale of foodborne transmission is increasing, and new hazards are being recognized. Many of these phenomena are exemplified in this issue of the Journal, in the clear and comprehensive report by Hennessy and colleagues of a massive outbreak of salmonellosis.
Salmonellosis -- with the notable exception of typhoid fever -- is a disease of civilization. The animals we use for food production frequently carry salmonella, thus contaminating meat, dairy products, and eggs. Salmonellosis is rare in developing countries, where sanitation is poor and diarrheal diseases are endemic, but where food production and consumption are local. In contrast, in the United States the reported incidence of salmonellosis has been increasing over the past 50 years, and approximately 1 percent of the population becomes infected each year. Outbreaks are becoming larger and, as shown by Hennessy and coworkers, may affect hundreds of thousands of people.
Most cases of salmonellosis (and foodborne illness) are considered to be endemic (or sporadic) because they are not clustered. The usual explanation for endemic cases is the inappropriate handling in kitchens and restaurants of contaminated food (including improper storage, undercooking, or cross-contamination). This is a plausible hypothesis because so many of the farm animals in the United States are colonized with salmonella and products derived from these animals subsequently become contaminated.
Alternatively, sporadic cases of disease may occur when a widely distributed food has low levels of contamination, a situation that leads to a low attack rate diffusely distributed over a large geographic area, so that no one realizes that an epidemic is occurring. The investigation by Hennessy and colleagues illustrates this second pattern. Despite substantial publicity, fewer than 600 of the more than 200,000 estimated cases of salmonellosis in this outbreak (only 0.3 percent) were actually reported to public health departments. The epidemic both highlights the deficiencies in our nationwide system of passive surveillance for salmonellosis and illustrates the value of field epidemiology that uses current surveillance data to detect outbreaks and prevent further transmission and disease. The cooperation of state and federal agencies and the speed with which they worked to solve the puzzle and protect the public safety make this a model for future investigations.
However, this epidemic probably reflects only the tip of the iceberg. The low surveillance rate suggests that smaller outbreaks are regularly missed. That the incidence of salmonellosis among persons with AIDS is many times that among the general public is also consistent with the view that widely distributed foods are contaminated by low doses of a pathogenic agent, leading to low attack rates in normal hosts but higher rates in compromised hosts. Such sentinel populations teach us much about the distribution of particular agents. This model also may be applicable to other foodborne illnesses, in which detection of the agent and surveillance are even less efficient than for salmonella. The high incidence of Campylobacter jejuni infections in persons infected with the human immunodeficiency virus points to the widespread transmission of low levels of this foodborne agent as well.
Modern food production is often so complex that many points at which contamination could occur are simply not recognized. Thus, in the outbreak of salmonellosis the use of tanker trailers to ship both pasteurized and nonpasteurized products represents a classic cross-connection that was not identified until the investigation was undertaken. The bulk transport of nonpasteurized liquid eggs provides an efficient means of amplifying the impact of even a single salmonella-contaminated egg so that it affects large numbers of consumers. This outbreak underscores the fact that to minimize risk from unrecognized hazards, pasteurization -- one of the most powerful tools against bacterial pathogens in the public health armamentarium -- should be undertaken at the latest possible step in food production.
Manifestations of foodborne disease are not restricted to the gastrointestinal tract, as illustrated by the etiologic role of Escherichia coli O157:H7 in the hemolytic-uremic syndrome, C. jejuni in Guillain-Barre syndrome, and Listeria monocytogenes in fetal morbidity, nor are the ramifications always obvious. The most pernicious threat may be the spread of antibiotic resistance by foodborne organisms, because of the promiscuous use of subtherapeutic doses of antibiotics as food supplements for farm animals, or the potential foodborne spread of the scrapie agent. New opportunities for foodborne diseases result from the increasing internationalization of our food supply, with the importation of foodstuffs from all parts of the globe, the introduction of new and sometimes uncooked items into our diets, and the preparation of food in restaurants and households by people who may be carrying unusual pathogens.
Food is not sterile, and eating cannot be made risk-free. Because of the standardization and quality-control measures that are part of industrialized food production, the safety of our food from many microbial hazards has probably never been greater. Yet because of the potential for amplification of a pathogen that is implicit in large-scale food production, the opportunities for the foodborne transmission of disease seem to be increasing.
The grim implications of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad-cow disease) for cattle and possibly humans point to the unanticipated problems that can arise from a breach in basic ecologic relations (cows, which are herbivores, were fed animal offal). Since new hazards are emerging from both familiar pathogens such as salmonella and previously unrecognized microbial threats, improved surveillance for foodborne infections is essential. Careful medical detective work similar to that reported by Hennessy et al. should highlight the basic ecologic imbalances underlying endemic and epidemic foodborne hazards and lead to their correction.
FDA overhaul legislation criticized
WASHINGTON (Jun 3, 1996) -- Legislation moving through Congress would eviscerate the FDA's power to protect Americans from harmful food, drugs and medical devices, critics in several activist groups said today.
The legislation would "take the FDA back down to a level where it was 25 years ago," said Sidney M. Wolfe, a physician who is director of the Public Citizen health research group.
The legislation amounts to "a Christmas wish list for food and chemical companies" that would "substitute Betty Crocker for Uncle Sam" in regulating food safety, said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
The critics charged that if the legislation becomes law, companies could add small amounts of cancer-causing additives to processed food, something that present law forbids. That would mean "dirtier food, more dangerous additives, and confusing labels" confronting customers in supermarkets, said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety with the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
The House Commerce Committee prepared to approve the legislation later this month. To speed up the review of news products, the legislation would overhaul FDA regulations to allow the use of third-party reviews of new drugs and foods, relax limits on the use of certain additives and reduce the requirements necessary to prove a new drug is safe and effective.
A less sweeping FDA overhaul was approved by the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, but has yet to reach the Senate floor. With time running out, and with the Clinton administration opposed to many provisions, supporters face an uphill battle in getting the plan enacted this year.
Statements by critics amount to "a very large collection of alarmist rhetoric," said Patrick S. Korten, deputy vice president for communications with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
The legislation provides that drug companies could have their applications to market new drugs or medical devices avoid review by formal FDA advisory panels, critics said. Pharmaceutical companies instead could opt to hire private companies to review their applications. It would be in the financial interests of a private review company to give favorable reviews to those drugs and devices, and recommend that the FDA approve them, Wolfe said. That way, drug companies would be more likely to use the private review company in seeking approval of other products in future.
That new procedure would amount to "a complete privatization of the drug review process," Wolfe said. The situation is "fraught with conflicts of interest." The bill would shift the burden of proof from companies having to show their new drugs are safe, to having the FDA prove that a drug recommended by a private drug-review company was unsafe, Smith DeWaal said.
Another provision in the legislation would permit drug companies to sell a drug approved for treating one patient disorder for a different disorder without having to go through a full review process, Wolfe said. The legislation would authorize the new use of the drug if physicians tell each other it is safe and effective for that purpose, constituting drug approval "on the hearsay of doctors," Wolfe said.
Copyright 1996 Nando.net ... Copyright 1996 Bloomberg
An idea developed by Dr. John Duncan of APHIS/VS in South Dakota, section Veterinary Medical Officer (VMO): a 'bounty' for bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the United States. Duncan's idea has been submitted through established channels for official USDA consideration.
USDA to offer Bounty on Mad Cows? Basically, the idea is to offer a monetary incentive (award) for the submission of bovine brain tissue that is subsequently diagnosed as positive for BSE (or other transmissible spongiform encephalopathy) and which can be successfully traced to its herd of origin in the United States. The money would be paid to the original submitter of the tissue, whether a veterinary practitioner, slaughter plant inspector, VMO, or veterinary researcher. Although the amount of this 'bounty' is open to discussion, it would probably be most useful if it were on a sliding scale such that the first BSE case (if there ever is one) would receive a much larger amount than would any subsequent cases.
Such an award should be widely publicized. USDA and cattle industry emphasis of this award would demonstrate an earnest intent to find BSE if it exists and would create greater consumer and trade partner confidence in regulatory and industry efforts related to BSE. Cattle industry organizations would be encouraged to participate in the sponsorship and promotion of the award.
The award would have several advantages including:
- 1. Encourage the submission of cattle brains to diagnostic laboratories. Even if no positives are ever found, our confidence in the statistical likelihood that BSE does not exist in the United States can be increased if a large number of brains are sampled.
- 2. Indicate the seriousness of the USDA and the cattle industry to find BSE if it exists in the United States. It would be difficult to suggest that there is no interest in finding BSE if a significant monetary award is out on the table for the first case found.
- 3. If no positive brains are ever submitted, no award money will need to be paid.
- 4. If a positive is found, it will likely be found sooner (at least a little, and maybe a lot) than if no award had been offered. Finding a case early will put everyone concerned in a better position to respond to the problem.
Potential problems with an award:
- 1. False positive results. These would seem unlikely, based on the diagnostic methodologies currently being used. Maybe a laboratory diagnostician with more knowledge in this area would like to comment on whether this is likely to be a problem.
- 2. Fraud. With a large award, someone may be tempted to try smuggling a positive brain in from the U.K. or something similar. Of course, no award would be paid unless a thorough investigation of the case found no evidence of fraud. I believe it would be a federal offense to defraud the USDA.
Any reactions or thoughts about this idea? Dr. Randall L. Crom, D.V.M. has agreed to forward comments that anyone might have to Dr. Duncan. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Randall L. Crom, D.V.M. Centers for Epidemiology and Animal Health Telephone: (970) 490-7884 USDA, APHIS, Veterinary Services FAX: (970) 490-7899 Fort Collins, Colorado, USA -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The above thoughts, ideas, or opinions have not been reviewed nor endorsed by Veterinary Services, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, nor the United States Department of Agriculture.
adapted from a listserve item of10 May 1996:
Litters of new pups swell population of Yellowstone wolves
BILLINGS, Mont. (May 11, 1996 10:00 p.m. EDT) -- Around Yellowstone National Park, five wolf dens are alive with new litters, leading biologists to predict that the wolf packs introduced into the park from Canada during the last year and a half will thrive on their own, without more imports.
"Wolf reintroduction is done, unless something unusual happens," said Ed Bangs, a biologist with the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service who helped to coordinate the airlifts of gray wolves from Canada over the last two winters.
When Yellowstone opens fully on May 15, wildlife watchers will find that the population of wolves has tripled from that of last year. In addition to 17 adult wolves that were added in January, biologists have counted eight new pups in two litters and are confident that three more females gave birth in late April.
"There are 15 to 30 new pups on the ground, making a total of 50 to 65 wolves," Mike Phillips, head of the National Park Service's wolf restoration project, said by telephone from his office in Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyo.
The wolves now in Yellowstone are the first to roam the park since the 1920s, when the last of that era's population were killed off by a government eradication program favoring livestock. Three-quarters of a century later, the species has been brought back to Yellowstone, and to locations in Idaho and western Montana, by the federal restoration project, which sprang largely from an overpopulation of elk.
In their new habitat, the wolf packs of Yellowstone have proved to be voracious eaters, killing an elk about every five days as well as an occasional mountain sheep, mule deer or moose.
The consolidation of the park's new wolf packs has defied not only court challenge and hostile politicians but also misadventure. Of late, gunfire or nature has killed at least one adult wolf a month. In February, one was killed by a mountain lion in western Montana, and another, which had wandered 80 miles south of the park, was shot by a passer-by. In March, a rancher shot a wolf that was roaming through a calving pasture 50 miles west of the park. And on April 14, an adult female fell into a Yellowstone thermal pool and was scalded to death. A necropsy showed that she had been just two weeks short of delivering six pups.
For all that, Bangs said, the program is doing well. "Over all," he said, "we expected a 30 percent mortality rate. Instead, we have a 15 percent mortality rate."
It is the wolves' propensity to foray beyond their Yellowstone base that makes the park's neighbors nervous. Two packs have established dens in Montana at sites about 35 miles northeast of the park. In April, one wolf roamed even farther north, to the town of Reedpoint, only 50 miles west of here. Already a federal judge in Wyoming is considering four lawsuits, backed largely by ranching groups, to reverse the wolf restoration program.
And, in an election year, some Western politicians are now accusing one another of being "soft on wolves."
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., recently traveled to the heart of his state's cattle country and denounced the multimillion-dollar program for "Cadillac expenditures." In retort, his Republican challenger, Dennis Rehberg, cited a "dramatic election-year conversion." Noting the senator's earlier support for wolf reintroduction, Rehberg accused him of having joined forces with Washington politicians "that don't give a hoot about Montana ranchers and farmers."
Copyright © 1996 Nando.net
Copyright © 1996 N.Y. Times News Service