Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser [153]
Aside from a brief mention on page 202, Fast Food Nation did not address mad cow disease or its implications. When I started working on the book a few years ago, the threat of BSE in the United States seemed largely hypothetical. E. coli 0157:H7, on the other hand, was sickening tens of thousands of Americans every year. Those illnesses were often linked to the consumption of tainted ground beef, and the meatpacking industry’s refusal to deal effectively with the problem of fecal contamination seemed a good example of the weaknesses in America’s food safety system. The harms caused by E. coli 0157:H7 have not diminished since the publication of Fast Food Nation. But mad cow disease now poses an even greater potential threat to anyone who loves hamburgers — and to the companies that sell them. Among other things, this afterword provides a brief account of the risks that BSE may pose, the government efforts to reduce those risks, and the remarkable power that the major fast food chains wield over the meatpacking industry. Mad cow disease is important today, not just as a deadly foodborne illness, but also as a powerful symbol of all that is wrong about the industrialization of farm animals.
On March 29, 1996, the Food and Drug Administration announced that in order to prevent an outbreak of BSE in the United States, the agency would “expedite” new rules prohibiting the use of certain animal proteins in cattle feed. American consumer groups had been demanding tough feed restrictions for years and were planning to sue the FDA if it refused to take action. Nine days earlier, Stephen Dorrell, the British health minister, had surprised Parliament by acknowledging for the first time that mad cow disease might cross the species barrier and infect human beings — a possibility that his government had vehemently denied for years. Great Britain was soon engulfed in a mad cow panic. Ten young people had developed a previously unknown ailment, called new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), that literally destroyed their brains. The disease was tentatively linked to the consumption of tainted beef. Cattle that had eaten feed containing the remains of infected animals now seemed responsible for transmitting the pathogen to human beings. Some of the young people with vCJD, Science magazine noted, had been “keen consumers of beef burgers.” The McDonald’s Corporation promptly announced that it was suspending the purchase of British beef.
The FDA’s vow to act quickly soon encountered resistance from the American cattle, meatpacking, meat-processing, feed-manufacturing, and rendering industries. Animal protein was an inexpensive feed additive that promoted growth, and slaughterhouses produced huge volumes of waste that needed to go somewhere. At the time, American cattle were eating about 2 billion pounds of animal protein every year — mainly the remains of other cattle. About three-quarters of all American cattle were being fed animal protein, and dairy cattle were the most likely to eat it in significant amounts. They were also the most likely to wind up as fast food hamburgers one day.
The National Renderers Association, the American Feed Industry Association, the Fats & Protein Research Foundation, and the Animal Protein Producers Industry opposed an FDA ban. Spokesmen for the rendering industry asserted that the link between mad