Texas cattle quarantine raises mad cow concerns

Until recently, the spread of the brain-destroying illness known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy from Britain to several continental European countries -- and the scare that has turned Europeans off beef en masse -- barely registered on the American radar screen. \nBut with the quarantine of some cattle in Texas last week, mad cow disease is making a splash this side of the Atlantic Ocean.\nNo case of mad cow disease has been found in the United States, and government and industry officials have pledged to keep it that way. \nA hint of trouble regarding mad cow disease on this side of the Atlantic was enough last week to send a shudder through U.S. agribusiness and some markets, according to Wall Street indexes. Shares of McDonald's fell Thursday after the Food and Drug Administration announced it had quarantined some cattle in Texas on suspicion they had been fed rations containing cattle parts in violation of rules to prevent mad cow disease. \nIn other developments, following a ban on beef imports from Brazil, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said although there was no evidence of mad cow disease in Brazil, it was concerned certain Brazilian beef products might have come into contact with beef from Europe, which has been hit with an outbreak of the brain-wasting disease. \nÆ have spread from Britain to other countries when the bones, spinal cord and other remains of diseased cattle were ground up for use in livestock feed. \nBritish officials at first denied the disease could spread to humans. They later said it could when more than 80 people died of a human version called new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease after eating infected beef according to British Department of Health. CJD, not believed to be related to cows, occurs via inheritance. It is "new variant" CJD that is contracted from eating beef products laced with infectious prions. \nDr. Pierluigi Gambetti, a neuropathologist at Case Western Reserve University, has been studying human brain tissue for four years. Out of nearly 500 cases examined, Gambetti said 292 people had died of classical CJD. "None has shown signs of the variant CJD," he said.\nScientists believe one way mad cow disease can be transmitted is through a cannibal-like feeding to cattle of ground up parts of other cattle or ruminants, a practice the U.S. has banned since 1997. \nThe U.S. cattle herd is nearly 100 million animals, the single largest segment of U.S. agriculture, according to the USDA. The production of grain-fed beef in the United States is among the most intensive in the world with massive feedlots containing thousands of cattle in close quarters. \nIn Europe, intensive agriculture has come under attack as helping to spread mad cow disease. \nSo, are Americans safe from mad cow disease? \nThe government and the industry Americans are safe. But food safety advocates are not sure. \n"The government agencies say they have erected this firewall (against mad cow). We don't have a firewall. It's more like a white picket fence," said Michael Hansen, a research associate with the Consumers Union in Washington.