NEWS OF THE WEEK FOOD
SAFETY
Veneman
MAD COW DISEASE Congress questions adequacy of current testing
C
ONGRESS LAST WEEK HOST-
ed two events on what to do about mad cow disease, bovine spongiform encephalopa thy (BSE). The Senate Commit tee on Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry held a well-attended hear ing on the topic, and Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.) moderated a scientific forum on BSE. At the hearing, Agriculture Sec retaryAnn M. Veneman said that USDA's practice of testing only 20,000 animals for BSE out of 38 million slaughtered each year is adequate, yet announced plans to double the number tested. The EU, in contrast, tests all slaugh tered cattle over 30 months old, and Japan tests all animals in
ORGANIC
tended for the human food supply FDA Deputy Commission er Lester M. Crawford Jr. said changes that his agency made last week in cattle feed regulations will provide additional protec tions against BSE. FDA banned cow blood as a milk replacer for calves and the feeding of chicken litter to cattle. Both are potential sources of infective BSE prions. But more testing was the pri mary issue. 'At the current level of testing, we have no real estimate ofthe true prevalence rate of BSE in our country," Sen. Richard J. Durbin(D-Ill.)said. At DeLauro's forum, Nobel Laureate Stanley B. Prusiner, who won the prize for discovering pri
ELECTRONICS
PHILIPS ADVANCES FLEXIBLE DISPLAYS Devices based on organic transistors could be on the market by 2006
A
SPIRING PAPERBOYS MIGHT
want to consider another line of work. New, flexible displays from Philips Research Laboratories could make getting a daily newspaper as simple as un rolling a sheet of electronic "pa per" and downloading the day's news from your cell phone. Philips' prototype grayscale displays measure about 5 inches diagonally. T h e y are 3 0 0 μιη thick and can be repeatedly rolled up into a tube with a 4-cm diameter without damaging the display Researcher Gerwin H. Gelinck at Philips' lab in Eindhoven, the HTTP://WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
Netherlands, says the displays of fer contrast similar to that of magazines. The electronics also have the potential to operate at video speed. Gelinck presented the work last week at an Ameri can Chemical Society Prospec tives conference in Miami; a report also appears ïnNatureMaterials {3,106 (2004)]. In addition to bringing to life the sci-fi vision of animated newspapers updated in real time, the devices also represent a step forward in the fabrication of electronic devices based on organic thin-film transistors (TFTs). Philips scientists make the dis-
ons, concurred. "I cannot under stand why our country remains unwilling to adopt the Japanese policy of testing every cow and bull destined for consumption by humans," he said. 'Any mammal is capable ofproducing prions spon taneously," and only widespread testing can find it, he explained. On Jan. 27, Durbin and De Lauro introduced legislation re quiring that all slaughtered cattle over 30 months old be tested for BSE. —BETTE HILEMAN
plays by gluing organic TFTs, grown on a polyimide plastic sheet, to a layer of flexible plastic embedded with "electronic ink" pixels. Growing the TFTs on plastic using a solution-based, lowtemperature technique relies on readily available production processes and helps to cut costs. The researchers can use the same process to incorporate some of the external circuitry that drives the displays. Gelinck says with nearly 80,000 TFTs, these are the largest organic-based displays to date. Although Philips has ambitious plans to bring the technology to market by 2 0 0 6 , G e linck says a more immediate goal is to slim down the displays and make t h e m amenable to being rolled up and stored in a container t h e size of a pen.— BETHANY HALF0RD C&EN
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