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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

The Mad Cow Cover-Up Begins to Unravel

By John Stauber PR Watch Posted June 14, 2005.

Last week the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture announced that an American cow 
tested positive for mad cow disease. Without major changes in the beef 
industry, it may be just the first of many.

The US government's elaborate cover-up of mad cow dangers in the United 
States has begun to unravel. Twenty-four hours after our successful protest 
with Organic Consumers Association of a US Department of Agriculture mad 
cow safety stunt in St. Paul, USDA Secretary Johanns was forced to admit 
that a cow tested last year and declared safe in fact DID have mad cow disease.

I've often charged that the USDA is hiding US cases of mad cow by using the 
wrong testing procedures and by failing to conduct food safety tests on 
millions of animals and this announcement proves it. USDA finally used the 
correct test -- the Western Blot test -- on this suspect animal and it has 
proven to be a case of mad cow disease.

We at the Center for Media and Democracy will continue to work hard on this 
issue until the US goes beyond lip-service and does what the EU countries 
and Japan have done: implement a science-based food-safety testing program 
that tests millions of cattle a year. And, the US must put in place a REAL 
"fire-wall feed ban" that would stop the current feeding of billions of 
pounds of blood, meat, bone meal, animal fat and poultry feces to cattle in 
the US. These on-going feed practices amplify and spread mad cow disease.

The US news media has

The rest of the article is at:
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/22217/