Mad cow's rarity could cut testing
BY JOE RUFF
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
A study indicates that mad cow disease is so rare in the United States that testing for the brain-wasting disorder could be reduced, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said Friday.
"I would argue that there's little justification for continuing surveillance at this level once our analysis is affirmed," Johanns said.
Cattle industry groups said they were pleased that a U.S. Department of Agriculture study indicates only four to seven animals in the United States are likely to have the disease, but at least one group did not want to see reduced testing.
"We think the USDA needs to expand its testing," said Shae Dodson of Montana-based R-Calf United Stockgrowers of America.
Federal officials said a maintenance level of testing in compliance with international standards could lower sampling from about 1,000 animals a day to 110 per day. No decision on testing levels has been made, officials said.
Michael Kelsey, executive vice president of the Nebraska Cattlemen, said the federal government's surveillance program proves that bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, in the United States is limited to a few isolated cases. The group wants to study the issue of testing levels and see what federal officials recommend before deciding what number would be adequate, Kelsey said.
"We believe maintenance testing, at a minimum, needs to be maintained," he said.
Ambassador Kato said he was impressed by conditions at Timmerman & Sons Feeding Co. near Springfield, Neb.
Gary Weber, executive director of regulatory affairs for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, said his group favors testing that meets international standards and gives people confidence that the disease is being adequately monitored.
"We don't know what the number should be," Weber said.
Johanns said an independent, scientific review will be conducted of the data analyzed under his agency's enhanced surveillance program. The USDA released the data Friday. Information thus far indicates the prevalence of BSE is extremely low, Johanns said.
"Science enables us to set a 95 percent confidence level in that estimate," Johanns said. "In other words, we have an extraordinarily healthy herd of cattle in our country."
Mad cow disease has been linked with a rare but deadly disease in humans that was blamed for more than 150 deaths during an outbreak in Europe in the early 1990s.
Since December 2003, three cases of mad cow disease have been found in animals in the United States. One of those animals was from Canada.
The USDA has tested more than 690,000 animals since June 2004, or more than 1,000 cattle per day from 5,700 locations, including farms, meatpacking plants and rendering plants, Johanns said. The department also looked at data going back to 1999, studying a total of more than 730,000 samples collected over seven years, Johanns said.
Johanns and others credited several actions for the apparently low rate of BSE in the United States, including a 1997 ban on certain types of cattle feed and the removal of specified risk materials from cattle as they are slaughtered.
Dodson said R-Calf believes the ban on including cattle parts in cattle feed should be broadened to also bar items such as chicken litter in feed. The group also fears that allowing cows from Canada, which has reported at least five cases of mad cow disease, might jeopardize the U.S. cattle herd.
Given those concerns, testing needs to remain high in the United States, Dodson said.
Dillon Feuz, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said the ban on feeding cattle parts to live cattle - the primary way BSE is spread - appears to be working because there have not been many cases of mad cow disease found in the United States.
Surveillance testing helps monitor occurrence of the illness, Feuz said, but BSE has not become a health issue in the United States because of the many safeguards taken against having contaminated material enter the food supply. Animals showing symptoms of mad cow disease are destroyed, and risk materials such as spinal columns and brains always are removed, he said.
"Whether we're testing animals or not, the at-risk materials are being removed," Feuz said.