WASHINGTON - After issuing a new set of safeguards, the Bush administration must take more steps to protect Americans from mad cow disease, Democratic lawmakers and consumer groups said on Wednesday.

Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said table scraps, roadkill animals and poultry litter must be barred from livestock feed.

Discovery of the nation's first case of mad cow disease in a Washington state dairy cow last week sent U.S. cattle prices plummeting by 20 percent and prompted more than two dozen nations to halt $3.2 billion in annual imports of U.S. beef.

In an abrupt change in policy, the Bush administration responded on Tuesday with several new restrictions to protect the food supply, including banning sick or injured cattle from use in human food. The ban on "downer" cattle was previously opposed by the White House and the livestock industry.

Consumer groups and Democrats welcomed the move, but said more needed to be done to keep food safe.

Their top proposal was putting country-of-origin labels on meat sold in U.S. stores no later than Sept. 30, 2004. The Republican-controlled House has passed a catch-all bill that would postpone labeling for two years, a delay sought by meatpackers and grocery stores because of the cost. The Senate will vote on the massive spending bill in January.

Democratic presidential hopeful Dick Gephardt said "we could have traced these animals much better" if country of origin labeling was in effect.

More federal meat inspectors also should be hired, Democrats said, but they did not specify how many.

Gephardt, a Missouri congressman, and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, also seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, said the government should help farmers affected by the outbreak.

That issue is an important one in agricultural states like Iowa, which hosts the nation's first presidential preference caucus on Jan. 19

"I think that we have to go further," Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, told Reuters. "We need to test all cattle over the age of three."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the meat industry have rejected adopting a program to test all U.S. cattle, modeled after Japan's approach.

"It's important that we target our surveillance systems to the highest risk populations -- older cattle that may have been dairy cattle, or breeding cattle that get into the system later -- and that's exactly what we'll do," Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said on NBC-TV's "Today" show.

Veneman used her power under an animal health act on Tuesday to bar downer cattle from the food supply. The animals, believed to number about 200,000 out of a total annual slaughter of nearly 36 million, still can be used in making pet food and other products not intended for human consumption.

A Senate vote in early November to ban downers was quietly overturned during closed-door negotiations with the House.

Other new restrictions prohibit the sale of meat from animals held for mad cow testing until results show the meat was safe. The USDA also issued stricter rules for handling spinal columns, brains and other risky cattle parts.

The disease, formally named bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is caused by misshaped proteins called prions. It is an incurable and fatal disease that can be spread through consumption of contaminated meat.

Jean Halloran, director of the Consumers Union Policy Institute, said scientists in Britain and Japan have found some mad cow cases where infected cattle could still walk and showed no symptoms of the disease.

"An animal has to be really far gone to be falling down," she said. "It's a positive step, but the USDA rules are not adequate enough to protect public health."

Consumer advocates also urged the Food and Drug Administration to expand its ban on using remains of ruminant animals, such as cows, in cattle feed and to bar the use of cattle remains in all types of livestock rations.

Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said table scraps, roadkill animals and poultry litter must be barred from livestock feed.

U.S. cattle futures prices fell for a fifth straight session on Wednesday, but analysts said the market was stabilizing amid signs that beef packing plants were dipping back into the market to buy live cattle.

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