Dairy cows who can no longer produce enough milk are slaughtered and used for pet food and cheap ground beef products like frozen burger patties and sausage and hot dogs.

"Ms Veneman said that only the "muscle cuts" had been sent for processing for human consumption and there was no record of the disease being transmitted through the meat. The brain and spinal column had been sent to a "rendering facility" elsewhere, but she did not specify how it had been used." (Guardian UK)

"Yesterday, Elsa Murano, under secretary of agriculture for food safety, said its brain and spinal column had been sent to such a plant, to be turned into protein feed, oils and other products. It is the brain and spinal cord that are the most likely to be infected with prions, the misfolded proteins that can lead to a mad-cow-like disease in humans." (NY Times)

It does point out the ridiculousness of testing for BSE in downer animals but not requiring the results of those tests before the animal is, er, processed. The infectious prions are mostly found in nerve tissue, but are also present in other tissues in smaller quantities.

To date, the USDA has stalled on releasing mad cow records to UPI for 6 months under the FOIA. It seems highly unlikely that only ONE cow out there in the US has this disease. Just over 20,000 cattle were tested last year, which seems like a lot until you realize we are talking about a herd oF 35 million. With such a long incubation period, it's very difficult to track this disease.

Art, some ranchers have been violating the feed ban, according to the GAO last year. They aren't usually punished. Besides, it's not illegal to render cows, feed them to pigs, and then render the pig and feed it to humans. Calves are allowed to be fed beef blood and fat.