After Mad Cow Coverup & Bungling USDA Will Test only 40,000 of 35 Million Cows Slaughtered Annually
U.S. looks at reducing mad-cow disease testing
By DANIEL ENOCH BLOOMBERG NEWS
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, April 29, 2006
http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Business/153203/
WASHINGTON The United States is considering cutting back on the number of cattle tested for mad-cow disease by almost 90 percent after data collected over two years showed the country's domestic herd probably holds just a handful of cattle with the illness, government officials said Friday.
The United States, though, is still trying to persuade Japan to lift a mad-cow-related ban on imports of American beef. A meeting between U. S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns and Japanese Agriculture Minister Shoichi Nakagawa is scheduled for next week. Japan, the top foreign buyer of U. S. beef before the first American case of mad cow was found in 2003, has insisted that the United States does not test enough of its cattle.
The decision on whether to cut back on tests will be made after experts review a draft analysis of data on almost 700, 000 animals screened since June 2004, Johanns said at a news conference in Washington. The testing program turned up two cases after the United States found its first mad-cow infection in December 2003.
Screenings may be reduced to a "maintenance" level of about 40, 000 a year, said Ron DeHaven, administrator of the U. S. Department of Agriculture's Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service. The United States slaughters about 35 million head of cattle annually.
The data compiled from the tests show "the most likely number of cases present in the U. S. is between four and seven animals," out of an adult cattle population of 42 million, Johanns said. "We can now say, based on science, that the prevalence of BSE in the U. S. is extraordinarily low."
BSE, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is the clinical name for mad-cow disease.
A congressional critic of the USDA's testing regimen said the data are too limited because samples were not collected in a scientifically random manner. For that reason, some regions of the country had fewer tests conducted.
"These shortfalls limit the conclusions we can draw from USDA's expanded testing program," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.
The USDA's inspector general raised similar concerns in a report earlier this year.
People who eat certain parts of animals infected with madcow disease may contract variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a similar, fatal brain-wasting ailment.
Johanns said he hopes the scientific review of the analysis will be completed by the end of May.
The agriculture secretary said he will discuss the analysis with Nakagawa next week at world trade talks in Geneva. Johanns previously has said he wants to persuade Japan to resume American beef shipments before deciding whether to cut the level of testing.
Japan bought about $ 1. 4 billion of U. S. beef in 2003, out of total U. S. exports of $ 3. 8 billion.
Historically, Japan is an especially important export market for Springdale-based Tyson Foods Inc., the world's largest meat processor. In 2003, Japan accounted for 27 percent of Tyson's $ 2. 2 billion in international beef sales. Information for this article was contributed by
Libby Quaid of The Associated Press, and by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette staff.