Mad cow disease in the US: South Korea, Indonesia ban US beef
Mad cow disease in the US is making headlines all over the world. South Korea, Indonesia have banned US beef while Russia and other countries are studying it very closely
The US beef industry is facing a crisis. Many nations have stopped import of the US beef following the reports that mad cow disease was discovered in the US. Nations like Indonesia and South Korea have taken steps to ensure that the US beef is not allowed inside their territories. Other nations may follow suit soon.
But right now there is no reason to believe that the mad cow disease is spreading in the US, as the struggling beef industry in the country is trying to show to the world, that the disease was limited and that it has not spread to any other animal in the US besides the one on which it was found.
Reports suggest that the cow was discovered with the deadly disease from a random test and was the fourth cow ever discovered with this disease. Investigations have revealed that the disease didn’t spread from contaminated fodder, but from a random mutation.
US carries-out random tests on as many as 40,000 cows every year. But this is a very small fraction of the total number of cows in the US. An expert suggests that this is less than 0.1 percent of the U.S. cattle herd. The expert says that this is not enough to find out a potentially killing disease in the beef industry.
But another expert says that as the US government has shown maturity in dealing with the issue and has been very open in admitting and quarantine, this must give some confidence to consumers across the world. Juan Lubroth goes on to add, “The fact that the U.S. picked it up before it entered the food chain and the fact that they were transparent should give more confidence to the trading partners, not less…However, I do see that sometimes countries take measures that are not based on science and that we do not support.”
Since the year 2006, this was the only case of mad cow disease found on a cow in the US. But experts in the US say there is no cause of worry as the disease doesn’t seem to have spread to any other cow besides the one infected by it.
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