• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

Ranchers.net

Today 7/12/2005 7:13:00 PM


US To Reach Regional BSE Survey Goals By End July -Source



WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The U.S. Department of Agriculture is on track to

reach all of its regional testing goals throughout the U.S. for bovine

spongiform encephalopathy by the end of July, a senior U.S. government official

said Tuesday.



"All the goals nationwide will be reached by the end of this month," said the

official, who asked not to be named.



USDA has already tested far more cattle for the brain wasting disease,

commonly called mad-cow, than it originally said was needed to get an accurate

picture of BSE prevalence in the U.S., but officials have kept it going to make

sure that each region of the country was adequately addressed.



In an interview with reporters last week, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns

said he has enough funding to operate the enhanced surveillance program through

August.



"We have been working to make sure that in (the) surveillance program we're

touching all of the necessary bases - the regions of the country," Johanns

said.



A USDA report released in May said cattle in the Northwest region of the U.S.

may be at higher risk for exposure to BSE because of their proximity to western

Canada, where the infection of four North American cases originated.



Since that report was released, a fifth was found with no known link to

Canada. That case was found in a cow that was born and raised in Texas.



When USDA implemented its enhanced surveillance program more than 13 months

ago, USDA officials predicted it would run 12-18 months and one of the goals

was to test 268,000 "targeted high-risk" cattle. Since June 1, 2004, USDA has

tested 405,976 of those cattle.



In March 2004 Ron DeHaven, then deputy administrator for USDA's APHIS, said

he believed there were only about 446,000 animals in the U.S. that fell under

the "targeted high-risk population" designation for BSE. And if the USDA were

able to test 268,000 of those animals, it would get a 99% degree of confidence

that it could find one positive animal in 10 million if it existed.



USDA found its first case of BSE in December 2003 at a time when it was

testing 20,000 cattle a year for the disease. That cow, it was later revealed,

had been born and likely infected in Canada. The second case of BSE was found

in Texas and an investigation is still ongoing.



-By Bill Tomson; Dow Jones Newswires; 202-646-0088; [email protected]
Top