USDA Fought Retesting of Infected Cow
MARC KAUFMAN / Washington Post 3feb2006
Agriculture Department officials overruled field scientists' recommendation to retest an animal that was suspected of harboring mad cow disease last year because they feared a positive finding would undermine confidence in the agency's testing procedures, the department's inspector general said yesterday.
After protests from the inspector general, the specimen was sent to England for retesting and produced the nation's second confirmed case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease.
The incident was described in an audit report assessing the department's surveillance program for the disease.
The report details why scientists at the National Veterinary Services Laboratories concluded that a sample from a Texas animal should be tested with other techniques following initial inconclusive findings. It adds that top officials at the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) told them not to do the additional tests.
When officials from the inspector general's office met with the head of APHIS, they were told that the protocol followed by the agency was the international "gold standard" and nothing more was needed, the report adds. Nonetheless, the sample was later sent to England for a different set of tests and was found to have the mad cow infection.
The report also found that although there was no evidence that infected meat had made it into the human food chain, the USDA surveillance system did not collect the information needed to say whether slaughterhouses were following all mad cow-related regulations. In nine of 12 facilities visited, the report said, inadequate recordkeeping made it impossible to know whether proper procedures were being followed.
"As a result, should serious animal disease be detected in the United States, USDA's ability to quickly determine and trace the source of infections to prevent the spread of disease could be impaired," the report said.
In a statement, USDA food safety administrator Barbara J. Masters said officials have taken steps to better enforce the rules and have reached agreement with the inspector general on most issues. "FSIS is confident it is successfully carrying out its mission to protect public health by strictly enforcing safeguards," she said.
The discovery of two cases of mad cow disease in American animals caused many nations to ban American beef, but some have resumed shipments.
Mad cow is a degenerative nerve disease in cattle that, in rare cases, has been passed to humans, who develop a fatal brain disease called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/02/AR2006020202240.html 4feb2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No Guarantee on Beef Safety:
U.S. Report
Japan Times 4feb2006
WASHINGTON (Kyodo) America's food supply was free of animal parts that might cause mad cow disease last year, but U.S. Department of Agriculture auditors were unable to determine whether slaughterhouses and meat packers complied with rules to safeguard consumers, the USDA inspector general said in a report Thursday.
The report comes as Japan again banned U.S. beef imports Jan. 20 after a spinal column, banned under a bilateral agreement as a specified risk material (SRM) was found at Narita airport.
"We did not identify SRMs entering the food supply," the inspector general said in the report. "However, due to the lack of adequate records, we could not determine whether SRM procedures were followed and/or were adequate in nine of 12 establishments visited during the audit."
"Several of the establishments did not comply with SRM plans or maintain records to support that they follow their plans," it said.
The report said the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service did not always identify the deficiencies that most of the reviewed beef slaughterhouses and packers had no adequate SRM plans.
The report said auditors were unsure about the USDA's process of checking the age of cattle subject to removing SRMs.
"FSIS periodically checks the accuracy of age determinations through dentition; however, we could not determine how often these checks are made," it said.
source: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20060204a1.html 4feb2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Feds Unsure If Mad Cow Safeguards Followed
LIBBY QUAID / AP / The Guardian (UK) 2feb2006
WASHINGTON - Investigators could not determine whether beef slaughterhouses and packing plants obeyed safeguards designed to keep mad cow disease from reaching humans, an Agriculture Department audit found.
The 130-page audit, performed throughout 2005 and released Thursday, turned up a case of mad cow disease last year in a Texas cow.
The department's inspector general didn't find that at-risk tissues - brains, spinal cords and other nerve parts from older animals - had entered the food supply.
But investigators found it impossible to say whether slaughterhouses were following the rules, according to the report.
The report also faulted the department for not keeping records that could help trace the source of an outbreak of disease.
"As a result, should serious animal disease be detected in the United States, USDA's ability to quickly determine and trace the source of infections to prevent the spread of disease could be impaired," the report said.
The rules for tissue removal were made in response to the first U.S. case of mad cow disease, in 2003. They say at-risk tissues must be removed when older animals are slaughtered. Infection levels from mad cow disease are believed to rise with age.
The Agriculture Department cited slaughterhouses or processing plants more than 1,000 times in 2004 and 2005 for violating the rules.
The number of violations has been dropping, said Kenneth Petersen, assistant administrator for the department's Food Safety and Inspection Service.
Officials have already taken steps to better enforce the rules, said FSIS administrator Barbara Masters. "FSIS is confident it is successfully carrying out its mission to protect public health," she said.
The audit also raised questions about the government's surveillance for mad cow disease. The department has been testing about 1,000 animals a day since 2004 and has tested a total of 605,252 animals. The U.S. has about 96 million head of cattle.
Investigators said they couldn't determine whether there were enough samples from different regions of the country and from animals with different symptoms. The government primarily tests sick, injured or dead cows, which are deemed to be at "high risk" of having mad cow disease.
Ron DeHaven, administrator of the department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said testing has found the disease rarely occurs in American cattle. "We have the appropriate safeguards in place - overlapping, redundant safeguards - to protect public health and animal health," he said.
One of the department's tests turned up a suspect cow in Texas in 2004. Officials in November of that year declared the cow to be disease-free, despite conflicting test results. Last summer, the inspector general ordered another test that confirmed the presence of mad cow disease.
It was the first case of mad cow disease in a native-born animal. An earlier case, in December 2003, was in an imported cow believed to have been infected in Canada.
Thursday's report offered new details on the Texas case. Two initial screenings produced "high positive" results, but a more detailed test came back negative.
Scientists at the department's laboratory in Ames, Iowa, wanted to do more tests. But they were overruled by officials in Washington who argued that the negative result came from a "gold standard" test.
"Also, they believed that conducting additional tests would undermine confidence in USDA's testing protocols," the report said.
Mad cow disease is the common name for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, a degenerative nerve disease in cattle that is linked in humans to the rare but fatal variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5589853,00.html 4feb2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
USDA Didn't Follow Procedures In '04 BSE Test
BILL TOMSON / Dow Jones Newswires 3feb2006
More important, the Inspector General auditors suggested, were the conflicting results. They said they came to the conclusion that more testing was needed "because the rapid screening tests produced six high-positive reactive results, the IHC tests conflicted, and various standard operating procedures were not followed."
The Inspector General began its audit of USDA's effort to assess the prevalence of BSE in the U.S. soon after the department's decision to significantly expand testing.
USDA had been planning to test 40,000 cattle for BSE as part of its 2004 routine until it discovered in December 2003 a case, and most major import markets banned U.S. beef.
On June 1, 2004, USDA began its enhanced BSE surveillance program and since then it has tested over 605,000 cattle.
USDA's DeHaven stressed to reporters that the problems the Inspector General found with diagnosis made in November 2004 did not cast any doubt on the hundreds of thousands of other tests that had negative screening test results.
While USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service runs the testing program, it is the Food Safety and Inspection Service that is responsible for ensuring BSE-risky material, called specified risk material, is removed from cattle so it doesn't enter the food supply.
The Inspector General's report said there was no evidence that risky bovine material entered the food supply, but the auditors noted that nine of the 12 facilities they visited lacked the records to show if the proper procedures were being followed.
The USDA considers material such as spinal cord to be a risky material if it comes from cattle 30 months or older, but the auditors said in the report that USDA relies solely on "meat establishments to determine the age of cattle slaughtered using documentation and dentition."
Food Safety and Inspection Service Assistant Administrator Kenneth Petersen told reporters Thursday there were 1,036 violations of BSE safety regulations at slaughter facilities between January 2004 and May 2005. He stressed that was a very small percentage of the 8.8 million inspection procedures performed during that period.
source: http://www.cattlenetwork.com/content.asp?contentid=17963 4feb2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
USDA Underscores Concerns Over Mad-Cow Surveillance Program
JANE ZHANG / Wall Street Journal 2feb2006
WASHINGTON — Government investigators are raising doubts that the Bush Administration's surveillance program for mad-cow disease can accurately determine its prevalence and quickly trace and stop its spread.
The Department of Agriculture's Inspector General said the program's voluntary nature — farmers and rendering plants take part on their own and transport cattle carcasses for testing — makes it impossible to determine whether the department collects enough testing samples from high-risk cattle based on risks and geography. The investigators also couldn't decide whether beef slaughterhouses and packing plants obeyed safeguards against the transmission of mad-cow disease to humans.
The audit, released yesterday, reviewed the system put into place in June 2004 as a response to the discovery of the first U.S. mad-cow case — in a Canadian-born cow found in a Washington state herd in December 2003. While conducting its review last year, the inspector general's office exposed a second case, a Texas cow that was misdiagnosed at USDA. Department officials, fearing undermining confidence in existing testing protocols, had ignored recommendations by its own scientists for further testing on the Texas cow, the audit said.
The inspector general didn't find that high-risk cattle parts, including the brains, spinal cords and others from the nervous system, had entered the food supply.
Mad-cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, causes spongy holes in the cow brain. The disease can trigger a rare but fatal brain disorder in people if affected meat is eaten. Cows are known to be infected by eating brain and other nervous tissues of animals already infected with the brain-wasting ailment.
USDA officials pointed out that the prevalence of the disease is very low in American cattle. Only one mad-cow case — in the Texas cow — was confirmed out of 605,000 animals inspected since June 2004, and less than 1% of all inspections at beef slaughterhouses or processing plants were related to violations of mad-cow rules.
The department has begun to reinforce its surveillance efforts, such as adding a more-sensitive test, called the Western blot, which confirmed the Texas mad-cow case.
"We always felt that voluntary program would work," says Ron DeHaven, administrator of the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
James Hodges, president of the American Meat Institute Foundation, an industry trade group, defended the government's surveillance program. "The multiple firewalls that create a shield against BSE ensure the American public that the beef supply is safe and wholesome," he says. "If BSE still exists in the U.S., it is successfully being eradicated.
MARC KAUFMAN / Washington Post 3feb2006
Agriculture Department officials overruled field scientists' recommendation to retest an animal that was suspected of harboring mad cow disease last year because they feared a positive finding would undermine confidence in the agency's testing procedures, the department's inspector general said yesterday.
After protests from the inspector general, the specimen was sent to England for retesting and produced the nation's second confirmed case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease.
The incident was described in an audit report assessing the department's surveillance program for the disease.
The report details why scientists at the National Veterinary Services Laboratories concluded that a sample from a Texas animal should be tested with other techniques following initial inconclusive findings. It adds that top officials at the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) told them not to do the additional tests.
When officials from the inspector general's office met with the head of APHIS, they were told that the protocol followed by the agency was the international "gold standard" and nothing more was needed, the report adds. Nonetheless, the sample was later sent to England for a different set of tests and was found to have the mad cow infection.
The report also found that although there was no evidence that infected meat had made it into the human food chain, the USDA surveillance system did not collect the information needed to say whether slaughterhouses were following all mad cow-related regulations. In nine of 12 facilities visited, the report said, inadequate recordkeeping made it impossible to know whether proper procedures were being followed.
"As a result, should serious animal disease be detected in the United States, USDA's ability to quickly determine and trace the source of infections to prevent the spread of disease could be impaired," the report said.
In a statement, USDA food safety administrator Barbara J. Masters said officials have taken steps to better enforce the rules and have reached agreement with the inspector general on most issues. "FSIS is confident it is successfully carrying out its mission to protect public health by strictly enforcing safeguards," she said.
The discovery of two cases of mad cow disease in American animals caused many nations to ban American beef, but some have resumed shipments.
Mad cow is a degenerative nerve disease in cattle that, in rare cases, has been passed to humans, who develop a fatal brain disease called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/02/AR2006020202240.html 4feb2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No Guarantee on Beef Safety:
U.S. Report
Japan Times 4feb2006
WASHINGTON (Kyodo) America's food supply was free of animal parts that might cause mad cow disease last year, but U.S. Department of Agriculture auditors were unable to determine whether slaughterhouses and meat packers complied with rules to safeguard consumers, the USDA inspector general said in a report Thursday.
The report comes as Japan again banned U.S. beef imports Jan. 20 after a spinal column, banned under a bilateral agreement as a specified risk material (SRM) was found at Narita airport.
"We did not identify SRMs entering the food supply," the inspector general said in the report. "However, due to the lack of adequate records, we could not determine whether SRM procedures were followed and/or were adequate in nine of 12 establishments visited during the audit."
"Several of the establishments did not comply with SRM plans or maintain records to support that they follow their plans," it said.
The report said the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service did not always identify the deficiencies that most of the reviewed beef slaughterhouses and packers had no adequate SRM plans.
The report said auditors were unsure about the USDA's process of checking the age of cattle subject to removing SRMs.
"FSIS periodically checks the accuracy of age determinations through dentition; however, we could not determine how often these checks are made," it said.
source: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20060204a1.html 4feb2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Feds Unsure If Mad Cow Safeguards Followed
LIBBY QUAID / AP / The Guardian (UK) 2feb2006
WASHINGTON - Investigators could not determine whether beef slaughterhouses and packing plants obeyed safeguards designed to keep mad cow disease from reaching humans, an Agriculture Department audit found.
The 130-page audit, performed throughout 2005 and released Thursday, turned up a case of mad cow disease last year in a Texas cow.
The department's inspector general didn't find that at-risk tissues - brains, spinal cords and other nerve parts from older animals - had entered the food supply.
But investigators found it impossible to say whether slaughterhouses were following the rules, according to the report.
The report also faulted the department for not keeping records that could help trace the source of an outbreak of disease.
"As a result, should serious animal disease be detected in the United States, USDA's ability to quickly determine and trace the source of infections to prevent the spread of disease could be impaired," the report said.
The rules for tissue removal were made in response to the first U.S. case of mad cow disease, in 2003. They say at-risk tissues must be removed when older animals are slaughtered. Infection levels from mad cow disease are believed to rise with age.
The Agriculture Department cited slaughterhouses or processing plants more than 1,000 times in 2004 and 2005 for violating the rules.
The number of violations has been dropping, said Kenneth Petersen, assistant administrator for the department's Food Safety and Inspection Service.
Officials have already taken steps to better enforce the rules, said FSIS administrator Barbara Masters. "FSIS is confident it is successfully carrying out its mission to protect public health," she said.
The audit also raised questions about the government's surveillance for mad cow disease. The department has been testing about 1,000 animals a day since 2004 and has tested a total of 605,252 animals. The U.S. has about 96 million head of cattle.
Investigators said they couldn't determine whether there were enough samples from different regions of the country and from animals with different symptoms. The government primarily tests sick, injured or dead cows, which are deemed to be at "high risk" of having mad cow disease.
Ron DeHaven, administrator of the department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said testing has found the disease rarely occurs in American cattle. "We have the appropriate safeguards in place - overlapping, redundant safeguards - to protect public health and animal health," he said.
One of the department's tests turned up a suspect cow in Texas in 2004. Officials in November of that year declared the cow to be disease-free, despite conflicting test results. Last summer, the inspector general ordered another test that confirmed the presence of mad cow disease.
It was the first case of mad cow disease in a native-born animal. An earlier case, in December 2003, was in an imported cow believed to have been infected in Canada.
Thursday's report offered new details on the Texas case. Two initial screenings produced "high positive" results, but a more detailed test came back negative.
Scientists at the department's laboratory in Ames, Iowa, wanted to do more tests. But they were overruled by officials in Washington who argued that the negative result came from a "gold standard" test.
"Also, they believed that conducting additional tests would undermine confidence in USDA's testing protocols," the report said.
Mad cow disease is the common name for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, a degenerative nerve disease in cattle that is linked in humans to the rare but fatal variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5589853,00.html 4feb2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
USDA Didn't Follow Procedures In '04 BSE Test
BILL TOMSON / Dow Jones Newswires 3feb2006
More important, the Inspector General auditors suggested, were the conflicting results. They said they came to the conclusion that more testing was needed "because the rapid screening tests produced six high-positive reactive results, the IHC tests conflicted, and various standard operating procedures were not followed."
The Inspector General began its audit of USDA's effort to assess the prevalence of BSE in the U.S. soon after the department's decision to significantly expand testing.
USDA had been planning to test 40,000 cattle for BSE as part of its 2004 routine until it discovered in December 2003 a case, and most major import markets banned U.S. beef.
On June 1, 2004, USDA began its enhanced BSE surveillance program and since then it has tested over 605,000 cattle.
USDA's DeHaven stressed to reporters that the problems the Inspector General found with diagnosis made in November 2004 did not cast any doubt on the hundreds of thousands of other tests that had negative screening test results.
While USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service runs the testing program, it is the Food Safety and Inspection Service that is responsible for ensuring BSE-risky material, called specified risk material, is removed from cattle so it doesn't enter the food supply.
The Inspector General's report said there was no evidence that risky bovine material entered the food supply, but the auditors noted that nine of the 12 facilities they visited lacked the records to show if the proper procedures were being followed.
The USDA considers material such as spinal cord to be a risky material if it comes from cattle 30 months or older, but the auditors said in the report that USDA relies solely on "meat establishments to determine the age of cattle slaughtered using documentation and dentition."
Food Safety and Inspection Service Assistant Administrator Kenneth Petersen told reporters Thursday there were 1,036 violations of BSE safety regulations at slaughter facilities between January 2004 and May 2005. He stressed that was a very small percentage of the 8.8 million inspection procedures performed during that period.
source: http://www.cattlenetwork.com/content.asp?contentid=17963 4feb2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
USDA Underscores Concerns Over Mad-Cow Surveillance Program
JANE ZHANG / Wall Street Journal 2feb2006
WASHINGTON — Government investigators are raising doubts that the Bush Administration's surveillance program for mad-cow disease can accurately determine its prevalence and quickly trace and stop its spread.
The Department of Agriculture's Inspector General said the program's voluntary nature — farmers and rendering plants take part on their own and transport cattle carcasses for testing — makes it impossible to determine whether the department collects enough testing samples from high-risk cattle based on risks and geography. The investigators also couldn't decide whether beef slaughterhouses and packing plants obeyed safeguards against the transmission of mad-cow disease to humans.
The audit, released yesterday, reviewed the system put into place in June 2004 as a response to the discovery of the first U.S. mad-cow case — in a Canadian-born cow found in a Washington state herd in December 2003. While conducting its review last year, the inspector general's office exposed a second case, a Texas cow that was misdiagnosed at USDA. Department officials, fearing undermining confidence in existing testing protocols, had ignored recommendations by its own scientists for further testing on the Texas cow, the audit said.
The inspector general didn't find that high-risk cattle parts, including the brains, spinal cords and others from the nervous system, had entered the food supply.
Mad-cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, causes spongy holes in the cow brain. The disease can trigger a rare but fatal brain disorder in people if affected meat is eaten. Cows are known to be infected by eating brain and other nervous tissues of animals already infected with the brain-wasting ailment.
USDA officials pointed out that the prevalence of the disease is very low in American cattle. Only one mad-cow case — in the Texas cow — was confirmed out of 605,000 animals inspected since June 2004, and less than 1% of all inspections at beef slaughterhouses or processing plants were related to violations of mad-cow rules.
The department has begun to reinforce its surveillance efforts, such as adding a more-sensitive test, called the Western blot, which confirmed the Texas mad-cow case.
"We always felt that voluntary program would work," says Ron DeHaven, administrator of the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
James Hodges, president of the American Meat Institute Foundation, an industry trade group, defended the government's surveillance program. "The multiple firewalls that create a shield against BSE ensure the American public that the beef supply is safe and wholesome," he says. "If BSE still exists in the U.S., it is successfully being eradicated.