- WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Creekstone
Farms Premium Beef, a small Kansas meatpacker, said Wednesday it could
test many more cattle for mad cow disease than the U.S. Agriculture Department
and at a much lower cost.
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- Creekstone, which the USDA last week prohibited from
testing its own cattle for the brain-wasting disease, said it could test
300,000 cattle per year for less than $6 million.
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- The USDA plans to test more than 200,000 cattle at a
cost of about $70 million.
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- The company has built a private laboratory at its plant
in Arkansas City, Kansas, and says it can test for $18 per head, compared
with USDA tests at $325 per head.
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- "The Creekstone Farms' plan will cost less than
$6 million using the identical test kit, and our customers are willing
to pay for the cost of the testing," the company said in a letter
to top USDA officials. The company made a copy of the letter available
to Reuters.
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- USDA officials were not immediately available to comment.
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- Creekstone urged the USDA to reverse its decision last
week and allow it to test independently for mad cow disease, a step the
privately owned company deems necessary to resume its trade with Japan.
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- "We are definitely going to fight this," said
Bill Fielding, Creekstone's chief operating officer. "Within a week
we will be taking some action, but we are still trying to determine the
best way to go about that."
-
- Among the options the company has are a federal lawsuit
or lobbying Congress to intercede.
-
- Fielding said the Bush administration's decision was
"politically motivated" and reflected the opposition of many
ranchers and large meatpackers to independent testing.
-
- The USDA has denied any outside influence, saying testing
is for animal health surveillance and not for marketing purposes.
-
- In its letter to the USDA, Creekstone also requested
approval to send brain stem samples to Japan for mad cow testing. Brain,
spinal cord and other central nervous tissue are believed to be the main
carriers of mad cow disease in infected cattle.
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- Creekstone, which had shipped about 20 percent of its
beef to Japan, said it was losing more than $200,000 a day in sales. That
is double the amount company officials had previously estimated in daily
losses.
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- About 50 workers have been laid off, the company said.
-
-
- Japan, the top buyer of American beef, has refused to
lift its three-month ban on U.S. beef until Washington agrees to test all
35 million U.S. cattle slaughtered annually.
-
- The administration insists Tokyo's demands are too costly
and not scientifically justified. Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform
encephalopathy, is believed to affect only cattle that are more than two
years old, due to a long incubation period.
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- http://www.forbes.com/markets/newswire/2004/04/14/rtr1331963.html
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