- US and Canada policy regarding Mad Cow Disease, and testing
is MAD, Insane and extremely hazardous to our health.
-
- " U.S. meat producers and agriculture officials
have stressed repeatedly that there has never been a case of BSE detected
in this country and such extensive tracking isn't necessary." This
statment should be amended to read, there has never been a case FOUND.
(they do not look because they don't want to find cases.)
-
- There is variant prion disease in the US and Canada and
it is spreading in deer, elk and moose herds. Given this fact, the US
and Canada should have been monitoring extensively for mad cow, especially
in CWD infected areas.
-
- The situation in Canada with the Black Angus was an abomination.
The fact that while the cow's head sat on a shelf, other cows and herds
could have become infected.
-
- Patricia
-
-
- Mad Cow Testing Delay Queried By US Officials
-
- By Tim Harper
- Toronto Star
- 5-27-3
-
- A Bush administration official took dead aim at Canada's
surveillance of its cattle stock yesterday as questions mounted here over
why it took almost four months to diagnose an Alberta Black Angus with
mad cow disease.
-
- Bill Hawks, undersecretary of agriculture in charge of
regulatory programs, told a Senate hearing yesterday that surveillance
results in the United States take only eight days, and he and another government
official said the lag in reporting in Canada was due to a backlog of test
results that would not be tolerated in the U.S.
-
- "We do our routine surveillance within eight days
of the sample being taken," Hawks said.
-
- "So, it is something that obviously we should be
addressing with our counterparts in Canada."
-
- He was responding to questions by a Wisconsin Democrat,
Herbert Kohl, who said such a delay would be "intolerable" in
the United States.
-
- Another Democratic senator, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota,
will hold a press conference today to repeat demands that U.S. Agriculture
Secretary Ann Veneman investigate the lengthy delay in reporting that the
cow, which was slaughtered last Jan. 31, had been stricken with the disease.
-
- Dorgan has suggested that it was either the work of an
incompetent Canadian system or the result of a cover-up in Canada.
-
- Hawks also said Washington was considering a quarantine
of all Canadian cattle in the United States.
-
- Kohl pushed the government officials to explain how the
Canadian diagnosis could have taken four months.
-
- "That kind of backlog would not be tolerated by
you here," Kohl told agriculture officials.
-
- "The fact that they have it up there is as intolerable
as it would be if it were true here in the United States, because ... 80
per cent of cattle they raise are being exported to us. Whatever problems
they have are our problems, isn't that true?"
-
- Elisa Murano, the undersecretary of the department in
charge of food safety, agreed with Kohl.
-
- Murano told senators Washington audits Canada's cattle
testing programs at least once a year because of the volume of beef imported
in this country.
-
- "It's not that their test is any different than
ours; it's the same test," Murano said.
-
- "Their backlog caused their delay in having that
sample collected in January, and not analyzed until now."
-
- Hawks said isolating Canadian cattle and beef products
already in the United States was an option being studied to keep this country
free of mad cow disease.
-
- "No decision has been taken at this particular point
in time," he told reporters after his Senate testimony.
-
- "There are all kinds of options (including) isolation."
-
- One privately owned company, Swift & Co., based in
Colorado, has already separated its Canadian cattle from the rest of its
herd.
-
- Yesterday, the agriculture department said there will
be no barriers to the slaughter or sale of Canadian beef products that
entered the United States before mad cow disease was discovered in Alberta
this week.
-
- The USDA said it will permit the use of any Canadian
ruminants or ruminant meat shipped across the border before a cow in northwestern
Alberta was found infected with the fatal disease.
-
-
- http://www.indystar.com/print/articles/1/045683-5151-010.html
-
- The confirmed case of mad cow disease in Canada is certain
to bring new attention to the quality of surveillance that protects the
United States' $80 billion beef industry, a system that critics say leaves
much to be desired.
-
- "This demonstrates that no cattle producing country
can think it's safe. It really is a clarion call to the U.S. Department
of Agriculture to step up surveillance in this country," said Steve
Bjerklie of Meat Processing magazine.
-
- In 2002, the USDA tested 19,990 cattle for the disease
-- scientifically known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE --
out of a U.S. herd of 100 million. But in Europe, said Michael Hansen of
the watchdog group Consumers Union, every animal over the age of 18 months
is tested.
-
- "They use quick overnight tests at slaughterhouses.
The carcasses get held overnight to cool down anyway, so if they get a
positive reading in the morning they can do a more exact testing."
-
- But beef industry representatives argue the United States
doesn't need the extensive level of testing used in Europe.
-
- "In England, it was epidemic. It was everywhere,
all through their herds. They let it get away from them. That's why they
had more intensive testing," said Chandler Keys, the National Cattlemen's
Beef Association's vice president of government affairs.
-
- U.S. health authorities immediately placed a ban on imports
of beef, cattle and animal feed from Canada after mad cow was diagnosed
in one cow from a ranch in Alberta, Canada, on Tuesday.
-
- Seven herds of cattle are now under quarantine in Canada,
investigators said Thursday.
-
- The infected cow was slaughtered Jan. 31 but kept out
of the food chain because it was believed to have pneumonia, officials
said.
-
- The head was sent to a provincial laboratory for routine
testing. Because there was no suspicion of BSE then and the animal was
not used for food, the sample had a low priority and was put in a backlog
for more than three months, said Dr. Gerald Ollis, Alberta's chief veterinarian.
-
- When testing indicated the possibility of mad cow disease,
the samples were sent to a British laboratory that confirmed it.
-
- Canadian investigators have removed all the cattle from
the Alberta farm the infected cow last lived in and were destroying the
herd to examine the brains for possible cases of BSE. Test results were
expected early next week.
-
- Still, the news stunned ranchers through much of western
Canada, where livestock trading was immediately halted because of plummeting
cattle prices.
-
- Keys said it's important to remember that one case in
Canada -- out of a total cattle population of 3.6 million -- is no epidemic.
-
- "Let's take a deep breath and look at everything
in a rational way," he said.
-
- It was the first case of mad cow disease in Canada since
a single cow was reported infected in 1993.
-
- The disease first appeared in England in the mid-1980s
when hundreds of cattle began staggering and losing weight before dying
mysteriously.
-
- While the disease can occur sporadically -- in humans
it is called Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease -- most of the time it is transmitted
when an animal eats tissues from an infected animal.
-
- The uncertainties surrounding the infected cow amplified
the threat to the Canadian economy, which had already stumbled from the
outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in Toronto in March
and April.
-
- Canada is the world's 10th-largest beef producer, representing
2.5 percent of total world output. The United States accounts for 78 percent
of Canada's beef exports.
-
- The U.S. economy is also potentially at risk. The interruption
of Canadian beef exports, although still temporary, will almost certainly
increase beef prices for American consumers and restaurants.
-
- And since Canadian cattle pass south every day -- last
year more than a half a million live head of cattle came across the border
from Alberta alone -- any significant spread in Canada would almost certainly
threaten U.S. herds.
-
- The $80 billion question here -- the approximate annual
value of the U.S. beef industry -- is how the Canadian cow became infected
in the first place.
-
- Elk in Western Canada have been found infected with chronic
wasting disease, an illness related to BSE, said Alberta veterinarian Kee
Jim. "It has been suggested there could be cross-species transmission,"
he said.
-
- But scientists don't believe BSE can be transmitted from
one live animal to another. In Europe, the route of infection was the feeding
of cow meat and bone meal to cattle. Canada and the United States outlawed
the feeding of such meal to cattle, sheep and goats in 1997.
-
- Another possibility is that the cow was fed infected
feed after the ban went into place. In the United States, at least, a report
in 2000 by the Government Accounting Office found that 28 percent of feed
companies weren't using labels with the required warnings; 20 percent of
the companies that handled both cattle and other kinds of meat and bone
meal didn't have required systems in place to prevent cross-contamination.
-
- The rules need to be strengthened if the U.S. meat supply
is to be protected from this disease, Hansen, of the Consumers Union, said.
-
- How the cow became infected is being investigated through
a trace-back program in which all Canadian cattle are tracked throughout
their lives.
-
- "If similar problems arose in the U.S., you presently
do not have that system," Jim said. In fact, the situation in Canada
"will probably provide some impetus to put that system in place."
-
- U.S. meat producers and agriculture officials have stressed
repeatedly that there has never been a case of BSE detected in this country
and such extensive tracking isn't necessary.
-
- But, said Jim, of Canada, "we would have said that
yesterday."
-
- http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow/delay52303.cfm
-
-
- Patricia A. Doyle, PhD
- Please visit my "Emerging Diseases" message
board at: http://www.clickitnews.com/ubbthreads/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=emergingdiseases
- Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa
- Go with God and in Good Health
|
