US Cow Free of BSE, Meat Industry Cheers
Date: 04-Aug-05
Country: USA
US beef exports plummeted after the first US case of the brain-destroying disease, in a dairy cow, in December 2003. While Americans are eating more beef than ever, major export customers such as Japan and South Korea still ban US beef.
The Agriculture Department said conclusive tests at its animal disease laboratory in Ames, Iowa, and a respected British lab in Weybridge, England, showed the animal did not have mad cow disease. The cow had trouble calving and died in April.
"It certainly lifts a cloud off the current situation," said Richard Fritz of the US Meat Export Federation.
"This helps the perception (among export customers) that we're transparent and willing to look at new tests and send it to Weybridge right away," Fritz said.
The American Meat Institute, a trade group for meatpackers, also welcomed the results and applauded USDA's decision to ask British experts to run a conclusive set of tests as well.
On June 24, USDA confirmed mad cow disease, formally named bovine spongiform encephalopathy, in a Texas cow that initially was ruled free of the disease. USDA said it mishandled some of the samples and did not keep proper records. An experimental test indicated the animal had BSE but it was overruled.
Questions also arose about the latest suspect, described as a cow that was more than 12 years old. A veterinarian took samples of its brain tissue in April but forgot to send them to USDA until July.
LIMITED TESTING
The samples were treated with a preservative that prevented use of most BSE tests. When USDA applied its "gold standard" test, it brought a "non-definitive" result and prompted the final tests in two countries.
"Needless to say, we are very pleased with these results," USDA Chief Veterinarian John Clifford said in a statement.
"The initial non-definitive test result was caused by artifactual -- artificial or untrue -- staining and while this staining did not resemble (mad cow disease), we felt the prudent course was to conduct the additional tests."
People can acquire a human version of the disease by eating infected beef products. Scientists say mad cow disease is caused by malformed proteins called prions.
USDA says a stepped-up testing program aimed at older and ailing cattle thought to be most at risk of the disease indicated mad cow disease "by any measure, is extremely low" in the United States.
The two major US safeguards against mad cow are a ban on using cattle parts in cattle feed and a requirement for meatpackers to remove from carcasses the brains, spinal cords and nervous tissues most likely to contain prions.
Consumer groups say USDA also should make permanent a ban on slaughtering "downer" cattle too injured or ill to walk for human food. They also say USDA should not scale back its BSE surveillance testing program, which has tested more than 400,000 head of cattle since June 2004.
The rancher activist group R-CALF said USDA should "test a statistically larger sample."
R-CALF is engaged in legal arguments with USDA over the government's resumption of trade in younger cattle with Canada, which has reported three cases of mad cow disease. The first US case was found in an animal imported from Canada.
Livestock traders shrugged off the news at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. "It wasn't a big deal when they found it, and it wasn't a big deal when it came back negative," said Bob Anderson, a livestock analyst with Commodity Services Inc.
