Although the USDA now excludes "downer" cattle from human
consumption in the US, it doesn't have significant plans to increase
testing for Mad Cow disease (BSE).

That's bad news--current testing, done on a random basis, is
very spotty and incomplete. If one infected cow is out there, there
are almost certainly others, especially because no one knows how that
cow got infected in the first place. I'd like to suggest that everyone
write USDA Secretary Ann Veneman (email: ), as
well as the departments responsible for food safety
and ) to request
greatly increased testing. Increased testing in France some years ago
doubled and then tripled the number of infected cows caught.

Only 20,000 cows are tested in the US each year, or less than
*one fiftieth of one percent* of the 120,000,000 cattle in the
country. With that kind of testing, what do you think the odds are
that all BSE has been caught? And if it's not caught, people are
certainly eating infected meat.

BSE is not a disease to fool around with--some 220,000 cattle
were infected in Britain before adequate testing caught up with the
problem, and many millions of cows had to be slaughtered. And the
incubation period in humans is 15 years, meaning that thousands may
have the disease and not know it.

By not significantly increasing BSE testing, by using a net
with huge holes, the US government is putting its citizens at serious
risk. Instead of waiting until large numbers of cattle--and
people--suddenly turn up infected, the USDA should do far more testing
than it does today. Japan now tests every cow, for example.

Please send email to the above addresses, asking for greatly
increased testing in cattle. If that testing reveals there's no
problem, it can certainly be scaled back, so the cost would be
minimal. But if there is a problem, we have to know about it.
It makes no sense to face BSE this blindly.

We need fewer damned trolls.