Editor’s note: The following editorial appeared in the Dallas Morning News on Friday.

Mad cow disease. That isn’t a phrase any of us wants to hear — especially at this time of year, when scrumptious foods spread across our holiday tables.

But the worst mistake the United States can make in confronting bovine spongiform encephalopathy, which appeared in Washington state this week, is to step into a state of denial. Is it elsewhere? Americans need to know.

Great Britain acted as though all was fine when the first signs of infected cattle appeared in the mid-1980s. But things weren’t all right. The situation worsened until British leaders finally had to authorize the slaying of herds. Much worse, Britons contracted the disease from contaminated beef. More than 100 deaths resulted from what Eric Schlosser describes in Fast Food Nation as the beef industry’s equivalent of Three Mile Island.

For that reason, the United States can’t act as though nothing is happening. The U.S. Agriculture Department, as well as state agencies like the Texas Animal Health Commission, needs to operate as openly as possible.

It’s more than disconcerting to know that United Press International has pressed the Agriculture Department for six months for information about the government’s mad cow disease tests. According to UPI, the feds tested about 20,000 cattle for the disease in 2002 and 2003. But they kept the information to themselves. That’s hardly a model of transparency. (Texas officials say the state tests every “downer cow,” which is the term for cattle that collapse and die.)

No one is saying panic. Let’s repeat that: No one is saying panic. The situation may be thoroughly contained. We hope so. Texas, with substantial beef and dairy herds, could take a sharp economic hit if the disease isn’t localized.

But no one will know that everything is contained unless the government, ranchers, farmers and agribusinesses speak plainly. They have much to gain in doing so, since they want people to buy their products. So do the rest of us. We just need to know what’s going on.