Preventing mad cow disease is all about controlling what cows eat, but federal regulations are full of loopholes and enforcement is lax, according to consumer advocates and the government's own watchdog.
Since an infected cow was found last month on a Washington state farm, federal authorities have tried to quell the public's concerns by citing feed companies' stellar compliance with the 1997 ban on mixing ground-up cow parts into cattle food.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which monitors animal feed, was reporting 99.9 percent compliance last month among the country's almost 12,000 feed mills, rendering plants and other facilities covered by the ban.
But loopholes in the feed ban are big enough to "drive whole herds of cattle through," according to consumer advocates. And a 2002 congressional investigation blasted the FDA for lax enforcement of the ban.
For starters, federal inspectors rarely sample the actual feed to test for banned materials.
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