A Big Food Safety Problem

Sick cows are one of our biggest food safety problems:

... Acidosis is often associated with a shift from a foragebased diet to a high concentrate-based diet or excessive consumption of fermentable carbohydrates. Acidosis may occur in cattle on high-grain diets common with youth livestock projects, bull development programs, and cattle finishing programs. It can also occur in stocker calves when self-feeders and highstarch feeds such as corn are used.

Acidosis is the result of low rumen pH. The typical pH of the rumen on a forage-based diet is 6 to 7. As the amount of forage or roughage in the diet decreases and the amount of concentrate increases, the pH of the rumen falls between 5 and 6, depending on the forage to concentrate ratio of the diet. Low pH supports growth of lactic acid-producing bacteria. Lactic acid is very strong and reduces rumen pH even more. Acute (severe) acidosis occurs when ruminal pH drops below 5.2, while subacute (less severe) acidosis occurs at a ruminal pH of less than 5.6. Laminitis, liver abscesses, and polioencephalomalacia often accompany acidosis. ...

Cows with acidosis, who've been fed grain instead of forage, produce deadly E. coli that can survive our stomachs. Healthy cows with a nearly neutral rumen pH still have E. coli in their guts, but these varieties of the bacterium are easily handled by our bodies.

The food safety bill that may be resurrected this week, H.R. 2749, does not address this topic, even though it laudably expands federal food recall powers beyond the toothless "voluntary recall." It does impose regressive fees on the sort of small producers not generally responsible for large-scale food contamination.

Congressional leadership may also put it up for a vote under a closed rule, which means no amendments can be offered. Again, I point you to the Center for Rural Affairs analysis of the vote situation. I'd hope that the pressure Congress feels to do something doesn't lead, as it so often does, to doing something stupid.