U.S. Eases Mad Cow Rules for Specialty Sausages

WASHINGTON — The government said Wednesday it was easing rules intended to prevent the spread of mad cow disease among people, allowing part of a cow’s small intestine to be used as casing for some sausages.

Rules in effect after discovery of the first U.S. case of mad cow disease in 2003 required the removal of the small intestine when a cow was slaughtered.

The Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration cleared the way Wednesday for a portion of the small intestine to be used as a casing for specialty sausages.

The rules still prohibit use of the small intestine’s lower-end section, the distal ileum. Studies have shown the distal ileum can contain the infectious protein that causes mad cow disease.

The Agriculture Department now knows more about effectively separating the distal ileum from the small intestine, said Daniel Engeljohn, an official with the department.

The nation’s first case of mad cow disease, confirmed in December 2003, was in a Canadian-born cow in Washington state.

Mad cow disease is the common name for a brain-wasting disease called bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. In people, eating meat products contaminated with BSE has been linked to about 150 deaths from a rare but fatal degenerative disease called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.