Consumers' Foundation: US beef still has concerns about L-type atypical mad cow disease

The controversy over American beef is raging. The Council of Agriculture's beef safety inspection team to the United States has just arrived in the country and stated that beef imported into Taiwan should be safe. On the 27th, the Consumer Foundation sternly demanded that the administrative department should immediately suspend the import and sale of American beef. Because in addition to concerns about ractopamine, American beef also has typical and "L-type" atypical mad cow disease problems; not only Taiwan has concerns, but other countries also have concerns.

Consumers' Foundation Secretary-General Chen Zhiyi (standing right) said that in addition to concerns about ractopamine, American beef also has typical and atypical mad cow disease problems. (Photo provided by Consumer Foundation)

Chen Zhiyi, secretary general of the Consumer Foundation, pointed out that the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently announced that a dairy cow in California was the fourth case of mad cow disease in the United States. Therefore, in order to protect the health of consumers, the American Consumer Union, led by senior scientist Dr. Michael Hansen, wrote to the country's Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture, hoping that they would improve the feeding of poultry and livestock with poultry waste, beef offal and chemical bone meal, because these are the transmission factors of mad cow disease.

According to the American Consumer Union, the confirmed case is "L-type" atypical mad cow disease, which is different from the typical mad cow disease previously confirmed in cattle herds in Europe and Canada. The FDA must be particularly vigilant that this case may not be a "spontaneous" case, but may be infected through feed and may be infectious to humans. The letter noted that some studies have shown that L-type mad cow disease may be more easily transmitted to humans than classic mad cow disease.

Chen Zhiyi said that since the case in the UK in 1997 confirmed that mad cow disease can be transmitted to humans and cause the deadly and incurable variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, American consumer groups have been urging the government to take further preventive measures to prevent mad cow disease from invading the United States. However, the US government turned a deaf ear to these warnings and calls, resulting in a series of mad cow disease cases in the United States starting in 2003.

However, despite opposition from consumer groups, the US government began to drastically reduce the proportion of mad cow disease testing to 1/10 of the original rate in 2007, in accordance with the requirements of livestock farmers; it still allows chicken waste mixed with cow meat and bone meal, and materials made from other mammalian corpses, to be used as legal cattle feed; and it still allows cow blood preparations to be added to substitute milk for forced weaning of calves.

But even so, the American Consumer Union still officially issued a statement in 2006 calling on the public to buy organic beef to "minimize the risk of mad cow disease" and to reduce the purchase of hot dogs, beef sausages and other foods that may be mixed with beef offal.

Chen Zhiyi emphasized that in addition to concerns about ractopamine, American beef also has typical and "L-type" atypical mad cow disease problems; not only Taiwan has concerns, but other countries also have concerns. The import of American beef should be suspended until the United States can provide scientific evidence to prove that mad cow disease will not occur, so as to ensure the safety of American food.