U.S. Aims to Lift Mad Cow-Related Restrictions on Canadian Cattle

By LIBBY QUAID, AP Food and Farm Writer
November 16, 2005
Associated Press

Excerpt...

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration hopes to lift remaining mad cow disease-related restrictions on Canadian cattle within the next year, the Agriculture Department said Wednesday.

The restrictions, in place since Canada discovered its first case of the disease in 2003, were eased earlier this year to allow younger cattle to enter the United States.

A prohibition has remained on Canadian animals older than 30 months; levels of infection from mad cow disease are thought to increase with age.

Government and industry officials argue that rules for how cattle are slaughtered would keep the disease from ever entering the human or animal food supply.

"At the end of the day, the risk occurs when that animal is slaughtered," said Ron DeHaven, administrator of the department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

"We have all of the safeguards in place to ensure the safety of the animal and the products that might be derived from that animal," DeHaven said.

The department is considering a new rule that would lift the remaining restrictions on Canadian beef, DeHaven said. He said if a risk analysis finds it is feasible, the rule could be proposed in six to eight months. A public comment period would follow.

One restriction would remain, DeHaven said: Animals born before Canada had an effective ban on cattle protein in cattle feed would not be allowed to enter the U.S…

…When the U.S. proposed to ease the Canadian ban in December 2004, the plan was to allow younger animals as well as meat from older animals. However, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns decided in February to keep the existing ban on beef from older cattle.

At that point, he told the department to start looking at whether beef from older animals, as well as the animals themselves, should be allowed inside the United States.

Since discovering its first case in May 2003, Canada has turned up two more cases. Two more cases turned up in the United States, one in a cow that was imported from Canada and one in a Texas-born cow.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Canada had shipped 364,757 cattle into the United States since live cattle imports resumed in July. Overall, the U.S. has an estimated 95 million cattle, 45 million of them adults.

Older animals typically accounted for about one-quarter of Canada's cattle shipments, according to Canadian industry estimates.

Mad cow disease is the common name for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. Eating meat products contaminated with infected tissue is linked to a rare, fatal illness, variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, that has killed more than 150 people worldwide, most of them in Britain, where there was an outbreak in the 1980s and 1990s.

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On the Net:

Agriculture Department: http://www.usda.gov