Beef Groups to Press USDA for Private BSE Tests
Date: 26-Jul-04
Country: USA
Author: Carey Gillam
"A lawsuit is definitely an option," said Bill Bullard, chief executive officer of R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America, one member of the budding coalition challenging the USDA.
Japan, previously the biggest foreign buyer of U.S. beef with $1.4 billion purchased in 2003, halted imports last December when the first U.S. case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly called mad cow disease, showed up in Washington state.
Japan has insisted that it will not ease its ban until the United States tests each cow or steer carcass for BSE, as is the practice in Japan.
But the USDA has refused, and it has refused to allow for private companies to buy the test kits that would enable them to test 100 percent of their herds.
"We've waited six months for the USDA to try and negotiate with the Japanese and other Asian markets and they've been unsuccessful," said Bullard. "Meanwhile our market share is being taken over by countries like Australia. If we don't act quickly we will have an extremely difficult time in buying back those markets."
R-CALF met last week in Denver with representatives from the live cattle sector, beef packing, and the beef retail and restaurant sectors to cement a coalition to challenge the USDA.
The group includes Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, a Kansas meat-packing plant, and Missouri-based Gateway Beef Cooperative, both of which have been banned by the USDA from testing their cattle.
The companies say that by testing 100 percent of their herds they will be able to begin exporting beef to Asian markets once again.
But the USDA has said that only animals displaying certain characteristics should be tested and 100 percent testing would set an improper and costly standard that could hurt companies that don't test their presumably health animals.
A USDA spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment Friday.
Humans can suffer fatal brain disorder after eating meat from BSE-infected cattle, though such cases have been rare.
"It's no longer just Creekstone fighting this," Creekstone's chief operating officer, William Fielding, told Reuters. "There are a large group of producers and others who are very much in favor of our testing."
On Thursday in Tokyo, Japan and the United States finished a final round of scientific talks without a resolution, though Japan did acknowledge there was little value in testing young cattle for the disease.