Mad cow concerns should be tempered
9:01 PM 12/28/03

There are reasons to be concerned about the discovery that mad cow disease has reached the United States. But there are also reasons to be reassured that the first known U.S. case, on a dairy farm in Washington, is something less than a national calamity. <

In Wisconsin, home to more dairy farms than any other state, it's worth making a few distinctions. <

Clearly, federal officials and the beef industry should reinforce their effort to combat mad cow disease. Expanded tracking and testing mechanisms are warranted to assure foreign nations and domestic consumers that U.S. beef is safe. How to pay for this reinforcement is a question deserving public debate in the coming weeks. <

Just as clearly, the public should disregard reasoning coming from fringe groups trying to use the disease to tout their points of view. Mad cow disease does not prove the superiority of vegetarian diets. It is not a condemnation of livestock agriculture. It does not demonstrate how mega-corporations ruin the world. It is not a sign that we should each grow our own food. And it is not President Bush's fault. <

Next, understand that the concerned response to the appearance of mad cow disease is based as much on what we don't know as what we do know. <

Scientists don't know precisely what causes the disease, which eats holes in the brain, or how it spreads, though they have sound theories. <

Scientists also don't know enough about how people contract the fatal brain illness called variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, linked to eating brain or spinal cord tissue from cattle with mad cow disease. <

The unknowns generate fears about where this first discovered U.S. case of the disease might lead. <

But much of what we do know about mad cow disease is more comforting. <

We know that mad cow disease is not some new super disease likely to play out like an apocalyptic science fiction movie. It belongs to a family of diseases that has been around for at least 300 years. These diseases include chronic wasting disease in deer and elk, which exists in Wisconsin. <

We know that all but one of the two dozen other nations with confirmed mad cow cases in native cattle have kept their number of cases relatively low. In Canada the single case of mad cow disease discovered in Alberta last May remains the only case found there. The exception is the United Kingdom, which reported the world's first case of mad cow disease in 1986, before strategies were in place to control it. The United Kingdom accounts for 95 percent of all mad cow cases. <

We know that variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease is extremely rare outside the United Kingdom. There have been about 150 confirmed cases in the world since 1995. All but about 10 of those are in the United Kingdom. <

It's important to take note of the reassuring news to keep the concerns about mad cow disease in check. For example, foreign concern prompted several nations to ban imports of U.S. beef, posing serious consequences for farmers. But if U.S. consumers understand the limited risks, the impact on the domestic market should be restrained. <

To Wisconsin's benefit, there is no reason for milk sales to be affected. There is no evidence that milk transmits mad cow disease. As consumers consider the consequences of the first known U.S. mad cow case, they should evaluate thoughtfully. There are reasons to be both concerned and reassured.