How Now Mad Cow

When does a corporation want more regulation? Apparently when its ox is being improperly gored.

McDonald's Corp. this week complained to the Food and Drug Administration that the government wasn't taking strong enough measures to keep contaminated meat from entering the food supply. Their concern, of course, is mad cow disease. The nation's biggest burger chain fears that people will flee its restaurants in droves if new cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease) show up in the U.S.

The U.S. has found two cases of mad cow disease, one in 2003 in Washington state and one in Texas. Unlike the Washington case, which was found in a cow imported from Canada, the Texas case involved a native born cow who probably ingested the bug that causes BSE in its food, which may have contained the remains of stricken cows.

Responding largely to pressure from importers of U.S. beef, the FDA announced a new program to test cows for BSE two months ago. Leading farm state senators and public interest groups immediately attacked the measures as woefully inadequate.

Critics say much higher testing levels than those proposed by the FDA are needed to reassure Japan and other trading partners. "I've said time and time again, there is little risk of BSE in U.S. beef, but it is obvious that we have not yet convinced key trading partners of that," Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, senior Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, told the Associated Press last November. Harkin wants the Agriculture Department to perform at least 20,000 more tests on healthy cows. That would still leave the vast majority of the U.S. beef supply untested.

Public interest critics are pushing the FDA to ban entirely the use of dead cattle, restaurant wastes and any tissues that contain nerve tissues, eyes or intestines in animal feed. Without specifying specific measures, McDonald's agreed that the agency should adopt measures that will reduce the risk of BSE-tainted beef to "nearly zero."