After seven months of silence, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) confirmed the second U.S. case of mad cow disease on June 24, highlighting the need for more stringent regulatory protections of the nation's beef supply. Seven months before the USDA announcement, government scientists ran a test that indicated that a U.S. cow was infected with mad cow disease. The result of this test was never publicly disclosed. According to the New York Times, The explanation that the Department of Agriculture gave late Friday, when the positive test result came to light, was that there was no bad intention or cover-up, and that the test in question was only experimental. "The laboratory folks just never mentioned it to anyone higher up," said Ed Loyd, an Agriculture Department spokesman. "They didn't know if it was valid or not, so they didn't report it." Inadequate Protections The USDA's failure to promptly confirm and report the newest case underscores the inadequate regulations currently in place at USDA to protect the nation's beef supply. Safeguards against mad cow disease include surveillance requirements and direct interventions to prevent the spread of mad cow disease in cattle. The revelation of the second confirmed case of mad cow disease in the U.S. is a stark reminder that both of these elements of the mad cow firewall are insufficient. Insufficient Surveillance While Japan tests every cow and Europe tests one in four, the U.S. tests only one in 90. That low number is still an improvement from 2003, when the U.S. tested only 1 in 1,700. In order to fill in this testing gap, USDA relies on statistics. Further, USDA has been resistant to implement the more stringent "Western blot" test for mad cow disease preferred in Europe. The U.S.'s "gold standard" of mad cow testing did not catch the latest case of mad cow disease. Rather, USDA relied on a test from a British scientist using the "Western blot" to confirm the second case of mad cow disease. Gaping Loopholes Still, testing alone does not prevent the spread of mad cow disease but, rather, only monitors its occurrence in the cattle population. The greater threat to the U.S. beef supply lies in USDA's failure to close the significant loopholes that exist in the safeguards designed to prevent the spread of the disease. Despite promises made more than 18 months ago, USDA has yet to close those loopholes. Mad cow disease is known to be spread through ruminant-to-ruminant feeding -- the rather innocuous term for the practice of feeding cows parts of other cows. Although the USDA banned direct ruminant-to-ruminant feeding in 1998, several loopholes still exist. For instance, cattle can be fed poultry litter that is contaminated with cattle meal, formula that contains cow blood, and even restaurant leftovers that include beef, all of which could transmit the deformed protein (or prion) that causes mad cow disease. These loopholes have not yet been closed. "Once the cameras were turned off and the media coverage dissipated, then it's been business as usual, no real reform, just keep feeding slaughterhouse waste," John Stauber, an activist and co-author of Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?, told the Associated Press in June. "The entire U.S. policy is designed to protect the livestock industry's access to slaughterhouse waste as cheap feed." Pattern of Cover-Ups? Government inaction on mad cow disease may well stretch back to the early 1990s. Federal investigators are now probing allegations from a former USDA veterinarian that the USDA covered up concerns over mad cow from the very beginning of USDA's mad cow surveillance program in 1990. Moreover, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) recently uncovered that the USDA may have mishandled two 1997 tests of suspected mad cow. In one, an independent university lab concluded that the cow "had a rare brain disorder never reported in that breed of cattle either before or since -- not the dreaded [mad cow disease]." CBC discovered, however, that "key areas of the brain where signs of [the disease] would be most noticeable were never tested. The most important samples somehow went missing."