USDA Fails to Proactively Remove Dangerous “Downer Cows” from Human Food Source – Punit Patel

The Committee chairwomen and Democratic Representative from Connecticut aggressively claimed that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) needs to take the issue of Mad Cow Disease seriously and take more stringent measures to ensure the safety of the American people. She pointed out that 5,000 Americans die each year due to insufficient inspection of food based on current regulations and compared their deaths to the 3,000 American lives lost in the World Trade Center attacks and vehemently stated, “This Nation went to war because of those deaths. We have 5,000 people every single year in this nation who die from food-borne illness. Do we not believe we should go to war against the system that allows that to happen?”(1) Of the 5,000 people accounted for about 250 die each year from Mad Cow Disease that was ingested from the processed meat of a “downer cow” on American soil(2). Downer Cows are sick and weak cows that are not able to stand on their own feet any longer and have a very high chance of having Mad Cow Disease.

Although the actual percentage of deaths from downer ingested meat is relatively low, it is important to note that symptoms from Mad Cow Disease appear years after meat ingestion has occurred. (3)The nature of such a prion disease is that it constantly is changing so it is difficult to contain and has the potential to incorporate itself into a part of the DNA passed down to the next generation.(4) Hence, we can only know of the past prevalence of the disease from how many people have currently died. However, epidemiologists predict a steady increase in deaths from downer ingested meat once the current infected population begins to show symptoms (5).

Since the USDA is the federal agency in charge of providing “leadership in food, agriculture, natural resources, and related issues based on a sound public policy, the best available science, and efficient management,”(6) the responsibility to make “sound public policy” lies in their hands and that is what is currently lacking. In March 2004 US legislation passed a law banning all downer cows from entering into slaughterhouses for the use of meat for human consumption. (7)In July 2007 the USDA removed this ban, and once again allowed USDA policy to include downer cows.(7) There was a stipulation to this ban lift stating that downer cows would be considered and included in the human food supply, only after the downer cow in question was re-inspected by a USDA certified veterinarian. (8) The USDA felt that a certified veterinarian would be qualified enough to understand the health implications of allowing a downer cow to pass USDA inspection. (8) The USDA’s policy allowing downer cows to be used as processed meat and re-enter the American food supply is irresponsible and unsafe taking into account the flawed foundation behind the policy, the lack of responsible and consistent implementation of it, and the dire consequences to the overall American Public Health.

Political Foundation
The political drive behind this policy is evident in that there are a series of obvious assumptions regarding the meat packers and convenient loopholes within the policy that allow the USDA to “look the other way” when certain regulations aren’t followed all the time. The USDA has two major responsibilities as an organization, one is to promote the agricultural industry via its Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) and the other is to maintain the safety of food quality for the American public via its Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).(6)

Though the intention of this paper is to critique the intervention or lack thereof via the policy and not the USDA or the federal organizational issues regarding overall food safety, it goes without saying that they go hand in hand as their is an inherent conflict of interest that cannot be overlooked. The USDA is expected to crack down on safety measures while maintaining the growth of the agricultural industry placing them in a political catch 22 situation.(2) Unfortunately, they choose not to enact seriously needed strict policies because they are influenced by the lobbyists from the meat industry and thus safety loses at the hands of marketing because of the meat industry’s strong political power over the USDA.(2)

Secondly, this policy is based on unreliable data and flawed laws from previous years which fall short of full proofing the food supply. For example, the 2006 USDA Inspector General Report stated that all annual inspections of Mad Cow Disease after the initial outbreak were voluntary and not random which misrepresented the actual sample size of potential cows with Mad Cow Disease. (11)This annual inspection is what the USDA uses when formulating the relative risk of the disease in the cow population of the United States which meets the 40,000 cows to be tested goal but ends up testing mainly healthy cows and not ambulatory downer cows.(9) This system works for the USDA as well as the meat industry since meatpackers who utilize a higher number of downer cows into their food source would not want to reveal themselves to the USDA and the USDA can fulfill their quota of testing without doing any serious damage to meat packers. Countries like England and Japan test all of its cows for Mad Cow Disease while the United States only tests .1% of its cows breeding a false sense of security from inadequate testing. (9)Though it might seem that there is no need for this, the Japanese originally had no cases of the disease but once they started testing they found 31 cases so the trend seems to be the more you test the more you find. (2) In the United States, testing isn’t even proportional to the number of cows slaughtered per state and in no way reflects the current risk in cattle.

The USDA relies heavily on the 1997 law stating the cattle feed cannot be fed to other cattle and spinal cord and brains of cows 30 months or older cannot be utilized as food but blood from cows can be incorporated in cattle feed.(7) The problem here is that prions can still travel via blood and what about the risk of a downer cow with Mad Cow Disease of 29 months?(8) Such laws with numerous loopholes cannot be considered the fundamental basis of safety from Mad Cow Disease in general or specifically from downer cows.

Finally, this new policy is a continuation of past mismanagement of food quality and safety as a result of basing the approach to safety solely on the Health Belief Model causing the responsibility and decision making to fall in the hands of the distributor of the processed meat and not the regulator, the USDA. (10)It is based on the idea that if the meat packers feel that a downer cow is susceptible to Mad Cow Disease and if they are informed of the seriousness of the disease, the industry will automatically choose the perceived benefit of public safety and accept the cost of the downer cow as lost revenue for the sake of the public’s health. It is also assumed that their intention of protecting the meat supply from disease will lead to responsible and safe behavior on the part of the meat packers. The assumptions this model makes are not only unrealistic but they are dangerous because they give so much power to an industry whose key incentive is profit and this one major fact automatically alters the outcome from this model. This is something the USDA has failed to realize allowing them to claim that according to their new policy, derived from this model, food safety is accounted for but the real question here is if the individual factories and their employees that makeup the industry are following through on that model?

Unsatisfactory Implementation of the Policy

The only way this policy would be able to successfully promote the interests of the meatpackers while still maintaining the safety of food quality from diseased downer cows is, if the state level implementation was carried out impeccably and if every single division and subdivision of this hierarchical ladder would honestly and carefully carry out his or her duties. Unfortunately, there are organizational deficiencies in staffing and training within the FSIS (the body that handles state-wide inspections and enforces regulations) as well the individual meat packing factories that have lead to a high level of inconsistencies confirming the risk of increased Mad Cow Disease prevalence in future years.

Training Issues

There is a serious lack of quality training being offered to both USDA officials and none is offered to the managers or their employees who are the ones assessing the on-site status of downer cows. A USDA Training and Development Consortium has been established “to provide coordination and consistency to the training function within USDA. The Consortium is authorized and empowered to direct mission areas and agencies to comply with its programs, procedures, and guidance” but one of the major goals as stated within their priorities is to “eliminate duplication of effort” so this is clearly training that is geared towards efficiency and conservative budgeting schemes than to genuinely train the employees for safe and tedious inspection of unsafe cattle. (6)

The FSIS deals mainly with managers of meat factories and rarely interacts with employees so no specific training is given to any employee by the government regarding state and federal regulations and that responsibility lies with the individual managers. (6) Though, it may seem fair and cost effective to not train private employees, there is no standard test or license or even certificate of completion or any document that states that the particular necessary training has been provided for the proper treatment and exclusion of downer cows. Every manager will train his or her employees and this is where the inconsistency occurs in quality of meat because though the policy requires a USDA certified veterinarian to inspect the downer cows for safety, before used as meat, the person making that decision is the ill trained employee whose expected to observe the downer cows on a federal standard of safety but works for a biased employer who would benefit from incorporating as much meat as possible. (2) Therefore, the employees may be “encouraged” to overlook certain regulations in an attempt to increase output causing the employees to not inform the USDA veterinarian and the potentially diseased downer cow ends up in the American food supply being distributed to various companies to be incorporated in hundreds of products.

The issue of inconsistency does not stop with the ill trained employees of the factories, but spills over into the main body enforcing the regulations, the FSIS. Staffing is limited requiring a higher level of “efficiency” which results in inconsistent implementations of policy. This allows for an ambiguous gray area where managers tend to use their own “discretion” and that is where the enactment of the policy fails.

Staffing Issues

There are 7,800 inspectors working for the USDA for 6,200 facilities, though this may seem adequate, each facility on average slaughters 500 cows which leaves approximately 1 inspector to every 400 cows for inspection per day. (6) Of that, there is an average vacancy of 500 inspectors which creates a 7%-21% lack of much needed inspectors within the districts. (6) The actual ratio should be of inspectors to number of cows within a facility since it clarifies the immense amount of responsibility for every inspector. Not only do they have to check the downer cows for injuries and disease, they also have to sample butchered meat for E. coli and various other bureaucratic tasks as well which leaves little time for actual thorough inspection.

Even if the inspectors manage to find regulations not being followed within factories, there seems to be an inherent inconsistency in the inspection process showing a dangerous level of leniency in some states. For example, the state of Pennsylvania has 139 meat plants but only 4 citations were written least year whereas in a more stringent and safer state like California there were 15 citations written where there are only 32 plants. (5) Though, it is a fair argument that the number of citations do not have to be proportional to the number of plants, there is a serious number of discrepancies in the above two states and the disheartening thing is that inspectors of both states receive the same federal and state level training. (6)

Finally, if inspectors do stay on there toes and actively issue citations when needed, there may be piles of citations before anything is done about the plant in terms of closing it down for violations or increasing on site inspections. There is no written rule of “x number of strikes and your out” so each violation amounts to a fine and tends to stop there. (7) For example, the Westland Meat Company in Chino, California was recently closed down and the largest meat recall in the history of the USDA was done amounting to 147 million pounds of meat after having received numerous violations from the USDA for the last 10 years. (2) This shows how long the meat company has been able to freely pass on dangerous meat into the food supply enhancing the argument of the increase in future deaths and current prevalence of Mad Cow Disease.

Consequences
Along with the medical dangers of this policy, there are a series of social consequences that prove to be detrimental to society psychologically, through the inhuman treatment of downer cows, and financially through the numerous recalls that occur in increasing numbers annually. The way in which the USDA has formulated this policy it seems that the only loophole to utilizing the maximum amount of downer cows is either to get the cows to stand by forceful means or injure the downer cows so that they may pass the inspection as “injured” rather than automatically excluded as “diseased.” (12) Though, downer cows are segregated for inspection separately, the sheer number of downers to inspect per day causes the quality of inspection to suffer. Here is where meat packers take advantage of the situation and through inhumane treatment inflict injury on the cows while trying to force them to stand.(12) And if an injury is found on a downer cow, the chances of it passing inspection as “injured” is much higher, taking advantage of the USDA’s Chairman, Ed Schafer’s argument that “injured downer cows are not a threat to the food supply and should be allowed.”(2) A key thing to remember here is that a downer cow with Mad Cow Disease can also get an injury and end up passing the test because of the nature of the disease. Veterinarians have trouble deciphering between the actual disease and an injury because the disease causes similar external symptoms of weakness as does an injury. (8)

Inhumane Treatment

Unfortunately, this policy harbors and instigates meat packers to employ inhuman methods of electrical prodding of downer cows, power hosing them, or simply pushing them with a fork lift until they stand up and walk into the slaughter house assembly line or get injured in the process and end up inspected and labeled as “injured” and then forced into the assembly line. (12) In fact, the Westland and Company factory was even cited for “too much electrical prodding” but was allowed to continue there slaughtering after a fine. (12) The Humane Society of the United States has clearly agreed that this policy is “dangerous and deplorable taking into account the large economic incentive the meat packers have to force downer cows into slaughter lines and the risk that even those cows with broken limbs and weak muscles are 49 to 58 times more likely to have Mad Cow Disease as the disease weakens muscles.”(12)

A major danger of this mistreatment is the greater impact on the industry as a whole as this creates a type of Meat Plant Culture of abuse and mistreatment of downer cows that is passed on as some sort of tradition to each new generation of employees. The entrance of a new employee into the meat factory and the training one receives as a result is based on the Social Learning Theory (10) where an employee will do what he sees his fellow workers doing and in this case it will be the illegal and inhumane attempts at trying the get downer cows to stand or pulling them with chains to the slaughter line. There is no question of any Reasoned Action () as the concept of self efficacy does not exist for most of these workers who are poor immigrants who are living pay check to pay check and are afraid of losing their job if they voice any sort of opposition to existing methods. As time goes on, the employee that initially entered the work force and learned this behavior of mistreatment through modeling has become a member of that very Social Network as in the Theory of Social Networking (10) and his or her behavior is a result of belonging to that Social Network which forms the “Plant Culture” of inhumane treatment and maintains this tradition through the Theory of Social Learning and a cyclical series of events occur over generations and the tradition of force and abuse continues as the next wave of employees arrive.

Recalls

In an effort to correct their wrongs of this policy, the USDA issues recalls whenever proof is presented of mistreatment of animals or risky entrance of un-inspected downer cows into the human food source as an attempt to protect the public from products containing the risky meat via the loopholes of this policy. (12) Unfortunately, recalls are a voluntary procedure and the USDA does not have the power to force any plant to comply and as the Consumer Federation of America’s Food Policy Institute points out “critical time can be lost in negotiating between the USDA and the company over the terms of the recall” prolonging the risk of Mad Cow Disease from the downer ingested meat. (13) Recalls cause the public to go under a scare and paranoia infiltrates members of society causing mistrust of food products and as a result the economy is effecting when United States quality of meat is questioned when other countries like France refuse American beef and revenue is lost. (1) Also, as was the case for 220 employees of the Westland and Company, hundreds of employees lose their jobs when a recall occurs as the loss of credibility leads distributors to pull out of their contracts with the plants. (2)

Finally, the meat from these factories which have recalls does not remain in a concentrated geographic area, but travels across the nation to millions of people as the meat is first sent to distributors and companies which process the meat for different products, 466 in the case of Westland and Company, so containing the potentially diseased meat is close to impossible. (2) In fact, the meat from the Westland and Company was distributed to the National School Lunch Program as well as to needy families with low income and that is a serious risk. (2) Most children who are approved to be a part of a school lunch program are required to be from medium to low income households and those very children’s parents might be ones receiving a part of the quota of meat distributed to needy families so that child is at risk two times more than the average person. (2) Children in general have lower immunity but coming from a low income household, whether child or adult, it is clear in the literature that healthcare options are limited if at all available. (12)

Conclusion
This policy is a threat in itself to the safety and well being of millions of Americans and needs to be changed immediately. The USDA is inherently not able to and lacks incentive to prevent downer cows from entering the human food supply and that needs to change. If nothing is done, we will have to watch an entire generation of beef consumers becoming infected with Mad Cow Disease and there will be nothing that can be done for them. One of public health’s main goals is prevention and we might have missed the current population but we can surely save the next one if action is taken now.

The ethical implications of allowing such a small group of people, in the industry, to control the health status and health outcome for millions of people is disturbing and unsafe. The fact that our world today is becoming smaller and smaller is a haunting fact when thinking of meat from downer cows and the increasing geographic area in which such meat is consumed. The factory owners in the industry weigh the chances of higher profits against the future sickness of the public and choose the immediate profit. One of the main reasons for this is that this is a decision for which the consequences will occur in the long run and by that time it will be nearly impossible to trace the meat to the original factory. Hence, the industry sees utilizing downer cows as a crime without a consequence and it is the current policy which gives them this security and causes such discomfort within the field of public health as well as the masses that may be at risk as of now.

REFERENCES
1. Lee, Christopher. Washington Post. USDA Rejects “Downer Cow Ban”. February 29, 2008.
2. http://www.pe.com/reports/2008/cattle/vitindex.html
3.http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usdahome
4. Zimmerman, Janet. United States Department of Agriculture Handbook of Laws. Washington, DC: Penguin Press, 2007 Edition
5.CJD deaths 'may have peaked'. BBC News (2001-11-23). Retrieved on 2008-04-08.
6."BSE: Disease control & eradication - Causes of BSE", Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, March 2007.
7."The BSE Inquiry", led by Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, report published October 2000.
8. Harden, Blaine (2003-12-28). Supplements used in factory farming can spread disease. The Washington Post. Retrieved on 2008-04-08.
9.Bovine Spongiform Encephalopaphy: An Overview (PDF). Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, United States Department of Agriculture (December 2006).
10. Association of Health Practitioners. List of Health Behavior Models. Washington, DC. Association of Health Practitioners. http://www.aph.org/health.
11. United States Department of Agriculture. 2006 USDA Inspector General Report. Washington, DC.
12. Humane Society of the United States. Westland and Co. Surveillance Report. New York, NY.