It's legal to put ground-up cattle remains in chicken feed. Feed that spills from cages mixes with chicken waste on the ground, then is swept up for use in cattle feed. Scientists believe the BSE protein will survive the feed-making process and may even survive the trip through a chicken's gut. That amounts to the legal feeding of some cattle protein back to cattle.

"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," said John Stauber, an activist and co-author of "Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?"

He contended, "The entire US policy is designed to protect the livestock industry's access to slaughterhouse waste as cheap feed."

The government is now investigating another possible case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, in the United States. The beef cow had been tested last November and declared disease-free, but new tests came up positive, and a laboratory in England is conducting more tests.

'Just a Lot of Talk'

The Food and Drug Administration promised to tighten feed rules shortly after the first case of mad cow disease was confirmed in the US, in a Washington state cow in December 2003.

"Today we are bolstering our BSE firewalls to protect the public," Mark McClellan, then-FDA commissioner, said Jan. 26, 2004. FDA said it would ban blood, poultry litter and restaurant plate waste from cattle feed and require feed mills to use separate equipment to make cattle feed. Chicken litter is ground cover for the birds that absorbs manure, spilled feed and feathers.

However, last July, the FDA scrapped the restrictions. McClellan's replacement, Lester Crawford, said an international team of experts assembled by the Agriculture Department was recommending even stronger rules, and the FDA would produce new restrictions in line with those recommendations.

Today, the FDA still has not done what it promised to do. The agency declined interviews, saying in a statement only that no timeline exists for new restrictions.

"It's just a lot of talk," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., a senior House Democrat on food and farm issues. "It's a lot of talk, a lot of press releases, and no action."

Risk of Accidental Contamination

Unlike other infections, mad cow disease doesn't spread through the air. As far as scientists know, cows get the disease only by eating brain and other nerve tissues of already-infected animals.

Ground-up cattle remains left over from slaughtering operations were used as protein in cattle feed until 1997, when an outbreak of mad cow cases in Britain prompted the United States to order the feed industry to quit doing it. Unlike Britain, however, the US feed ban has exceptions.

For example, it's legal to put ground-up cattle remains in chicken feed. Feed that spills from cages mixes with chicken waste on the ground, then is swept up for use in cattle feed.

Scientists believe the BSE protein will survive the feed-making process and may even survive the trip through a chicken's gut.

That amounts to the legal feeding of some cattle protein back to cattle, said Linda Detwiler, a former Agriculture Department veterinarian who led the department's work on mad cow disease for several years.

"I would stipulate it's probably not a real common thing, and the amounts are pretty small," Detwiler said. But still, if cattle protein is in the system, it's being fed back to cattle, she said in an interview.

Cattle protein can also be fed to chickens, pigs and household pets, which presents the risk of accidental contamination in a feed mill.

Loopholes Remain

Rendering companies, which process slaughter waste, contend that new restrictions would be costly and create hazards from leftover waste. They say changes are not justified.

"We process about 50 billion pounds of product annually -- in visual terms, that is a convoy of semi trucks, four lanes wide, running from New York to LA every year," said Jim Hodges, president of the meatpacking industry's American Meat Institute Foundation.

While new restrictions stalled, the administration also ignored the advice of its own experts to close the loopholes before allowing Canadian cattle back into the United States.

Cattle trade "should not resume unless and until" loopholes in the feed ban are closed, according to an internal Agriculture Department memo, written by its working group of BSE experts in the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, dated June 15, 2003, shortly after Canada's first case of mad cow disease.

The ranchers' group, R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America, obtained the memo as part of its lawsuit against the department.

Even though the loopholes remain, the Agriculture Department late last year approved reopening the border. Only a federal judge in Montana is keeping the border closed. He sided with R-CALF, which fears another infected cow shipped south might be carrying the disease, just like the lone US case found in Washington state in 2003.