In addition to those works, my account of mad cow disease and the FDA rulemaking process is based on the following documents: “Finding of No Significant Impact and Environmental Assessment for 21 CFR 589.2000, Prohibition of Protein Derived from Ruminant and Mink Tissues in Ruminant Feeds,” Center for Veterinary Medicine, Food and Drug Adminstration, November 1996; “Substances Prohibited for Use in Animal Food or Feed; Animal Proteins Prohibited in Ruminant Feed; Proposed Rule,” Part IV, Federal Register, January 3, 1997; “Cost Analysis of Regulatory Options to Reduce the Risk of an Outbreak of Transmissable Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs) in the United States, Addendum to the Final Report,” Office of Planning and Evaluation, Food and Drug Administration, April 30, 1997; “Substances Prohibited from Use in Animal Food or Feed; Animal Proteins Prohibited in Ruminant Feed; Final Rule,” Part II, Federal Register, June 5, 1997. I also relied on transcripts of two public forums held by the FDA to allow discussion of its proposed feed rules: “Food and Drug Administration, Public Forum on the Proposed Rule 21 CFR 589: Substances Prohibited from Use in Animal Food or Feed, St. Louis, Missouri, February 4, 1997” and “Public Meeting for Consumers Regarding Federal Register 21 CFR Part 589, Substances Prohibited from Use in Animal Food or Feed; Animal Proteins Prohibited in Ruminant Feed; Proposed Rule; Washington D.C., February 13, 1997.” For years the reporting about mad cow disease in Food Chemical News has been objective and first-rate.
Interviews with software designer Hitesh Shah, journalist Viji Sundaram, and attorney Harish Bharti helped me understand how revelations about McDonald’s fries and the flavor industry led to riots in India. I am grateful to Eugene Richards for pushing hard to complete our photoessay on the lives of meatpacking workers, and to Roger Cohn, the editor of Mother Jones, for publishing it without hesitation. The plight of Latino meatpacking workers in Texas was eloquently described to me by Trini Gamez at the Centro Gamez in Amarillo and by Michael Wyatt, the director of Texas Rural Legal Assistance. Attorneys Jim Wood, Channy Wood, and Kevin Glasheen explicated for me some of the unique features of Texas workers’ comp law. They have demonstrated real courage in their legal battles with the meatpacking giants. Karen Olsson, editor of the Texas Observer, was extremely generous with her own research on IBP. Michael J. Broadway, an expert on meatpacking who heads the Department of Geography at the University of Michigan, provided much information and encouragement. Most of all, I am grateful to the injured meatpacking workers who shared their stories with me: Kenny Dobbins, Hector Reyes, Raul Lopez, Rita Beltran, Dora Sanchez, and Michael Glover, among others. Their suffering cannot adequately be put into words.
Page
272 the agency would “expedite”: Quoted in Lawrence K. Altman, “Cow Disease Sparks Voluntary Rules on Feed,” New York Times, March 30, 1996.
“keen consumers of beef burgers”: Quoted in Claire O’Brien, “Scant Data Cause Widespread Concern,” Science, March 29, 1996.
American cattle were eating about 2 billion pounds: According to the USDA, the rendering industry at the time handled about 7.6 million tons of ruminant protein per year, about 5.5 million tons of it derived from cattle. Approximately 13 percent of the animal protein handled by industry (992,099 tons) was used in cattle feed. I have converted the tons into pounds to give a sense of the massive amounts of slaughterhouse waste involved. The figures are cited in “Finding of No Significant Impact and Environmental Assessment for 21 CFR 589.2000, Prohibition of Protein Derived from Ruminant and Mink Tissues in Ruminant Feeds,” Center for Veterinary Medicine, Food and Drug Administration, November 1996, pp. 15–16, 21.
three-quarters of all American cattle: Cited in Michael Satchell and Stephen J. Hedges, “The Next Bad Beef Scandal? Cattle Feed Now Contains Things Like Chicken Manure and Dead Cats,” U.S. News & World Report, September 1, 1997.
273 “totally unsupported by any scientific evidence”: Quoted in “Rendering Industry Supports Voluntary Guidelines for Cattle with Suspected CNS Disease,” Food Chemical News, July 29, 1996.
“unfeasible, impractical, and unenforceable”: Quoted in ibid.
brains, spinal cords, eyeballs: See “NCBA Urges Scientific BSE Prevention,” Press Release, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, February 18, 1997.
fats, blood, blood products: See “Industry, Public Interest Groups Differ on FDA’s Proposed Ruminant Ban,” Food Chemical News, March 10, 1997.
allowing cattle to continue eating dead pigs: See the statement of Dr. Beth Lautner, vice president of science and technology at the National Pork Producers Council, Transcript of “Food and Drug Administration, Public Forum on the Proposed Rule 21 CFR 589: Substances Prohibited from Use in Animal Food or Feed, St. Louis, Missouri, February 4, 1997,” p. 101.
“all mammal remains to all food animals”: Quoted in “Controlling ‘Mad Cow Disease’: We call for stronger FDA action,” Consumer Reports, May 1997.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised: See “CDC Rejects Any Weakening of FDA’s Ruminant Feed Ban Proposal,” Food Chemical News, March 31, 1997.
“The United States has no BSE”: Quoted in “Substances Prohibited from Use in Animal Food or Feed; Animal Proteins Prohibited in Ruminant Feed; Final Rule,” Part II, Federal Register, June 5, 1997, p. 30939.
“mammalian-to-ruminant, with exceptions”: Quoted in ibid., p. 30968.
274 these industry groups rightly worried: See “FDA Public Forum,” pp. 36–9.
a remarkable example of cooperation’: Quoted in Chuck Cannon, “Renderers Appear To Be Bearing Up Well to FDA’s Ban on Ruminant Protein in feed,” Meat Marketing & Technology, March 1998.
“protected the beef industry”: Quoted in ibid.
“verbatim”: Quoted in ibid.
“the number of BSE cases there soon doubled”: Cited in “Developments in Mad-Cow History,” Wall Street Journal, March 1, 2001.
the number of BSE cases increased fivefold: Cited in Geoff Winestock, “Tracking Spread of ‘Mad Cow’ in Europe Remains Random,” Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2001.
that supplied ground beef to McDonald’s restaurants: See Melanie Goodfellow, “Italy’s First BSE Case Found in Cow Destined for McDonald’s,” The Independent, January 16, 2001, and “Final Tests Confirm BSE in Cow in Italian Slaughterhouse That Supplies McDonald’s,” AP Worldstream, January 16, 2001.
plummet by as much as 50 percent: Cited in Geoff Winestock, “‘Mad-Cow’ Disease Cases Jump Despite EU Increased Testing,” Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2001.
275 one-quarter of the firms handling “prohibited” feed: Cited in “Food Safety: Controls Can Be Strengthened to Reduce the Risk of Disease Linked to Unsafe Animal Feed,” GAO/RCD-00–255, United States General Accounting Office, September 2000, p. 12.