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US-Beef
February 2, 2006
Associated Press/ Washington Post
WASHINGTON -- The USDA inspector general was cited as saying in a report Thursday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture auditors were unable to determine whether slaughterhouses and meat packers complied with rules to safeguard consumers from mad cow disease, stating, "We did not identify SRMs entering the food supply. 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."
Pointing out possible problems in the inspection process, 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.
The report also noted that 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.
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.
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.
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