- RIVERDALE, Md. -- Mad cow
disease probably has been established in North America for more than a
decade, and Americans should be prepared for the discovery of more domestic
cases as it spreads through herds.
-
- A panel of international experts released these findings
Wednesday to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, also urging the Department
of Agriculture to toughen protections put into place following the Dec.
23 discovery of an infected Holstein in Washington state.
-
- Those protections, while helpful, are not sufficient
to keep mad cow disease from spreading further, or "amplifying,"
within the North American herd, the researchers concluded.
-
- "We need more, much more," said Ulrich Kihm,
a Swiss scientist who led the advisory panel. "If we don't accept
and implement measures -- strong measures -- then we have this amplification
cycle going on and on."
-
- Will Hueston, a veterinarian at the University of Minnesota,
estimated that more testing would uncover the presence of more mad cow
disease: "I wouldn't be surprised by two or three more cases. I think
in the worst-case scenario, from everything we know to date, we're talking
a dozen or maybe two dozen (cases)."
-
- The lone Washington case rocked the U.S. beef industry
and to some degree the public's confidence in the safety of the beef supply.
Dozens of foreign nations blocked the importation of U.S. beef as processors
in Oregon and Washington scrambled to recall, in several states, more than
a million pounds of processed meat, fats and proteins traced to the infected
cow.
-
- The panel released its findings to a restive group of
regulators, scientists and meat-industry representatives Wednesday in Riverdale.
Significantly, it called bovine spongiform encephalitis, or BSE, "indigenous"
in the United States and Canada and built its proposals around halting
transmission of the disease:
-
- Test and dispose of all "downer" cattle more
than 30 months old. Now, cattle unable to walk are barred from entering
the food chain and may elude testing.
-
- Test all cattle more than 30 months old that exhibit
signs of mad cow disease, die before slaughter or are slaughtered under
emergency circumstances.
-
- Eliminate high-risk tissues, including brains and central
nervous tissue of cattle 30 months or older, from animal feed and human
food supplies.
-
- Expand feed restrictions to bar all mammalian and poultry
protein from cattle feed.
-
- Implement a national animal identification system.
-
- The panel's assertion that BSE was indigenous to North
American herds was its most controversial. Although the Washington cow
was born in Canada, the report warned: "The significance of this BSE
(mad cow) case cannot be dismissed by considering it 'an imported case.'
"
-
- Kihm said he thought that infection of the North American
herd had begun before the disease was diagnosed extensively in Britain
and linked to human deaths but that it only recently had spread to detectable
levels in Canada and the United States.
-
- "We believe that the infection in North America
took place at least 10 years ago," Kihm said. "You need one cycle
before you have a few animals positive, and you don't see them in the first
cycle. You need a second or a third."
-
- The findings were presented to a USDA subcommittee appointed
by Veneman. Some members expressed frustration.
-
- "It's still possible most, if not all, here came
from somewhere else," said Robert Eckroade, a researcher at the University
of Pennsylvania. "Indigenous means we're going to have it for years,
and I'm not ready to support that."
-
- Tobin Armstrong, a rancher from Texas, said the panel's
proposals would impose enormous costs on the cattle industry when the threat
to human health appeared to be minimal.
-
- "We're talking about going to draconian measures
to measure something we don't fully understand," Armstrong said. "What
are we trying to protect ourselves against?"
-
- Kihm said that extra care is warranted precisely because
scientists don't fully understand the disease or how it is transmitted.
Therefore, they should not resist taking actions that they know can reduce
risk of spread, he said.
-
- "You have to realize that you can't measure the
effect of all your measures implemented today," he said. "You
have to wait five, six years."
-
- Kihm also said he disagreed with a study from the Harvard
Center for Risk Analysis concluding that existing precautions, such as
the feed ban, had arrested the spread of mad cow and eventually would eradicate
the disease.
-
- "The disease will spread, spread all over the place"
if no additional steps are taken, he said.
-
- Veneman was briefed on the panel's findings but has not
yet decided whether to act on them, said Julie Quick, a spokeswoman.
-
- In Washington state, meanwhile, legislators on Wednesday
considered a half-dozen bills that would change how state agencies and
farmers deal with sick or dead animals. A bill expanding the state's power
to quarantine animals suspected of diseases passed the Senate Tuesday and
is being considered by the House.
-
- Other bills, awaiting committee approval, would give
the state power to require animal identification programs; create a board
to address disposal of dead cattle; suspend the business tax on beef wholesalers
until Japan, Mexico and Korea lift their bans on U.S. beef; and make it
a misdemeanor to violate federal rules on animal feeds or to transport
downer animals for nonmedical reasons.
-
- Staff Writer Andy Dworkin contributed to this report.
Jim Barnett: 503-294-7604; jim.barnett@newhouse.com
-
- ©2004 OregonLive.com. All Rights Reserved.
-
- http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/
base/front_page/107598594853210.xml
- \
|
