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By Root 1181 0

more than a decade, countries in the European Union had assured the public that BSE had not been detected in their cattle. Which was true, because relatively few of their cattle had been tested for the disease. Once widespread testing began in Europe, the actual scale of the mad cow epidemic started to become clear. Switzerland was the first to begin routine testing; the number of BSE cases there soon doubled. Then Denmark began testing and discovered its first infected animal, followed by new cases in Spain and Germany. After widespread testing began in France, the number of BSE cases there increased fivefold. On January 1, 2001, the European Union launched a program that required BSE testing for all cattle older than 30 months. Intended to calm fears of mad cow, the EU program had the opposite effect, as more and more infected cattle were discovered. On January 15, the first case of BSE was found in Italy. The infected animal was discovered at a slaughterhouse near Modena that supplied ground beef to McDonald’s restaurants in a number of European countries.

The fear of mad cow disease caused beef sales in the EU to plummet by as much as 50 percent, and news from the United States was hardly reassuring to consumers there. A federal investigation of American feed mills and rendering plants found that many companies had not been taking the threat of mad cow — or the FDA’s new feed regulations — very seriously. More than one-quarter of the firms handling “prohibited” feed neglected to add a label warning that it should never be given to cattle. One-fifth of the firms handling both prohibited feeds and feeds approved for cattle had no system in place to prevent commingling or cross-contamination. And about one out of every ten rendering firms was completely unaware that the FDA had passed feed restrictions to prevent the spread of mad cow. In Colorado, more than one-quarter of the cattle-feed producers had somehow never heard about the new rules.

The federal government’s apparent inability to keep prohibited feed away from cattle prompted the McDonald’s Corporation to take action. The company’s sales in Europe had already fallen by 10 per-cent, and American publicity about mad cow was raising doubts about the wisdom of eating any hamburgers, let alone Big Macs. Officials from the FDA and the USDA, as well as representatives from the leading meatpacking and rendering companies, were quietly invited to discuss the feed issue at McDonald’s corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois. On March 13, the McDonald’s Corporation announced that its ground beef suppliers would be required to supply documentation showing that FDA feed rules were being strictly followed — or McDonald’s would no longer buy their beef.

IBP, Excel, and ConAgra immediately agreed to follow McDonald’s directive, vowing that no cattle would be purchased without proper certification. Every rancher and feedlot would have to supply signed affidavits promising that banned feeds had never been given to their cattle. The American Meat Institute, which routinely fought against any mandatory food-safety measures proposed by the federal government, made no complaint about these new rules. “If McDonald’s is requiring something of their suppliers, it has a pretty profound effect,” said an AMI spokeswoman. What the FDA had failed to achieve — after nearly five years of industry consultation and halfhearted regulation — the McDonald’s Corporation accomplished in a matter of weeks. “Because we have the world’s biggest shopping cart,” a McDonald’s spokesman explained, “we can use that leadership to provide more focus and more order throughout the beef system.”

wrong wrong wrong

FOR THIS PAPERBACK EDITION Penguin has included quotations from some favorable reviews of Fast Food Nation. In the interest of balance, I’d like to quote a few contrary opinions. “McGarbage,” wrote a correspondent for the National Review Online. “Schlosser wears many hats, a few of which are conical and contain the word ‘dunce.”’ I was described, moreover, as a “health fascist,” and “economics