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Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2006 9:40 AM
Subject: Mad cow testing dispute or cover-up ???


Mad cow testing dispute featuressome crazy bureaucratic logic



Last Updated: May 8, 2006, 05:00:10 AM PDT


A ranching and meat-processing company in Kansas wants to test all its cattle for mad cow disease at its own expense.
The Bush administration won't let the firm do it. Oh, but that's not all. If the company tries to buy the $20 testing kits, the feds will treat such a transaction as an illegal purchase of a controlled substance.

We wish we were making this up, but we're not. Talk about mad cow, this is crazy people. It's also an intrusive government abusing an old law.

In 1913, when cholera was decimating hog herds, scam artists were selling fake serums to farmers. Congress responded with the Viruses, Serums, Toxins, Anti-Toxins and Analogous Products Act. It gave the federal government authority to regulate diagnostic testing devices for farm animals.

The Bush administration rediscovered this law when the Kansas company, Creekstone Farms, announced plans to test its entire herd for mad cow disease. The company was willing to go far and beyond the government's test regimen to reassure its customers in places such as Japan.

Private companies make these test kits and there is nothing dangerous about them. Still, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says ranchers such as Creekstone Farms can't buy them.

Creekstone Farms is a victim of a much larger debate over the nation's limited testing of its beef supply. The USDA tests about 1 percent of the nation's beef cattle for mad cow disease. That sampling, the government and large meatpacking companies say, is plenty. Many other nations, especially those that import our beef, test a far greater percentage of their herds. Japan requires 100percent testing.

Creekstone Farms once sold its high-end Angus beef (no growth hormones, no antibiotics) to Japan. Now it can't because of this mad cow disease testing dispute between Japan and the Bush administration. Nor can Creekstone Farms voluntarily test 100percent of its cattle, because the USDA has cut off the supply of thetest kits.

In business, the customer is always right. The Bush administration is wrong to deny Creekstone's customers — whether in Topeka or in Tokyo — access to tested beef. So, Creekstone is suing the USDA.

The administration likes to tout "free market" solutions to big problems. Creekstone came up with a good one. It's crazy not to let the firm pursue it.



http://www.modbee.com/opinion/story/12154788p-12901166c.html





BOTTOM line, the USDA and GW et al know exactly what will happen if they 'test to find' mad cow i.e. BSE in the USA, they will find many many cases. THIS is the only reason why they dug this old 1913 law. THE june 2004 enhanced BSE surveillance program was designed 'not to find' BSE, but they accident found a few cases. i cannot imagine how many cases would actually have been found if they would have used proper BSE testing protocols and used proper testing on the 9,200 they refused to use rapid test or WB. with the terribly flawed IHC test that were used on those 9,200 animals, all 9,200 could very well have been positive BSE. AS the CDC's Prion expert said, all those tests before 2005 are meaningless...

Paul Brown CDC

These two cases (the latest was detected in an Alabama cow) present a picture of the disease having been here for 10 years or so, since it is thought that cows usually contract the disease from contaminated feed they consume as calves. The concern is that humans can contract a fatal, incurable, brain-wasting illness from consuming beef products contaminated with the mad cow pathogen.

'The fact the Texas cow showed up fairly clearly implied the existence of other undetected cases,' Dr. Paul Brown, former medical director of the National Institutes of Health`s Laboratory for Central Nervous System Studies and an expert on mad cow-like diseases, told United Press International. 'The question was, `How many?` and we still can`t answer that.'

Brown, who is preparing a scientific paper based on the latest two mad cow cases to estimate the maximum number of infected cows that occurred in the United States, said he has 'absolutely no confidence in USDA tests before one year ago' because of the agency`s reluctance to retest the Texas cow that initially tested positive.

USDA officials finally retested the cow and confirmed it was infected seven months later, but only at the insistence of the agency`s inspector general.

'Everything they did on the Texas cow makes everything they did before 2005 suspect,' Brown said....



http://www.upi.com/ConsumerHealthDaily/view.php?StoryID=20060315-055557-1284r



http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/02n0273/02n-0273-c000490-vol40.pdf



http://www.michigan-sportsman.com/forum/showthread.php?t=132781



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