USDA to Continue Stricter BSE Testing

Critics Say Higher Testing Levels Needed to Ensure Other Countries of Meat's Safety
Libby Quaid, Associated Press Writer
November 21, 2005
Grand Forks Herald (North Dakota)

Excerpt...

The government plans to maintain its escalated level of testing for mad cow disease, extending a timetable that would have slowed the search for infection significantly.

With the lucrative Japanese market poised to reopen to American cattle, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns says he wants government scientists to continue testing about 1,000 cattle a day.

"I have just been very reluctant to even set a date as to when we would bring that to a close," Johanns says. "It's safe to say the enhanced surveillance is going to extend beyond the end of December."

Johanns says his decision is not about Japan, which bought more American beef than any foreign customer until the United States discovered its first case of mad cow disease. Johanns says he wants to ensure that testing represents all regions of the country, and healthy animals are tested.

Still, critics of the department say higher testing levels are needed to reassure Japan and other trading partners.

"I've said time and time again: There is little risk of BSE in U.S. beef, but it is obvious that we have not yet convinced key trading partners of that," says Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, senior Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Under pressure

Harkin and other lawmakers have been pressuring the department to do at least 20,000 more tests on cows that are healthy.

The government has been testing only sick, injured or dead cows, those deemed to be at "high risk" of having mad cow disease. High risk means animals showing signs of mad cow disease, such as nervous system problems or emaciation, downer animals that can't walk or dead animals.

Tests are done on brain tissue from cows, so animals must be killed before they can be tested. No test has been devised to confirm the disease in a living animal.

Johanns' predecessor, Ann Veneman, promised to test healthy animals based on recommendations from a panel of international experts on mad cow disease. Johanns says he recently reread Veneman's comments on testing healthy animals in transcripts from a congressional hearing...

Safeguards

The nation's first case of mad cow disease was confirmed in December 2003 in a Canadian-born cow in Washington state. In response, the Agriculture Department increased its testing in June 2004 from an average of about 55 daily to more than 1,000 a day.

Authorities have tested 516,496 animals and turned up a second case in a Texas-born cow that tested positive in June. The number of cows tested is about 1 percent of the 45 million adult cows in the United States.

As part of its campaign to guard against the spread of mad cow disease, the government also inspects processing and rendering plants and tests animal feed. The only way mad cow disease is known to spread is through feed containing certain tissue from infected cows. Adding animal protein to feed was a common practice to speed growth until the United States banned it in 1997.

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:

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