Import bans turn tables on U.S. industry "Bush has made a lot of enemies", now the chickens come home to roost. First case of mad cow in U.S.
FOREIGN REACTION: Import bans turn tables on U.S. industry
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Staff Writer Wednesday, December 24, 2003
www.sfgate.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The apparent discovery of mad cow disease in a lone cow from Washington state poses no immediate health concerns, but it could deliver a body blow to the entire nation's beef industry.
It remains to be seen whether American consumers will cut back on beef, despite reassurances that the meat is safe. But America's $2.6 billion beef export industry is already in jeopardy.
As if to confirm cattlemen's worst fears, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan and Australia imposed bans today on U.S. beef imports.
"We've made a lot of enemies around the world with our own arbitrary tariffs," said Dean Cliver, a professor of food safety at UC Davis. "I think they will take great pleasure in embargoing U.S. beef.''
When a single cow in Canada was diagnosed with the disease in May, the United States slapped an immediate ban on Canadian cattle and beef products, which continues to this day. Other nations imposed similar restrictions.
"Canada did lose their export market to most of the world,'' said California State Veterinarian Dr. Richard Breitmeyer. "If this were to happen to the United States, it would have a very serious impact.''
Beef represents the 10th-largest agricultural export for California, with Asian nations the primary market. "We are already in contact with Japan and South Korea, to be sure that their decisions are based on science and don't become a political issue,'' said Holly Foster, spokeswoman for the California Beef Council, a Pleasanton trade group.
California shipped $155 million worth of beef in 2001 -- the latest year for which figures are available.
The U.S. has had a policy of banning imports of beef from any nation where mad cow disease is found. British beef has been banned since 1989; in 1997, the ban was extended to all of Europe. In 2000, the ban was further strengthened to include any products of rendered beef.
Mad cow disease, known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is a progressive and fatal degenerative disease that destroys the brains of cattle. The original outbreak in England was believed to be caused when cattle were fed grain mixed with meat and bone meal from sheep infected with a neurodegenerative disease known as scrapie.
Both scrapie and mad cow disease are believed to be caused by prions, which are neither viruses nor bacteria, but are abnormally shaped proteins that destroy nerve tissue.
When humans eat the brains or spinal cord tissues of prion-infected cattle, they too can come down with a similar fatal syndrome, dubbed variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. All the various bans on cattle and beef products are designed to eliminate human consumption of the tainted meat.
Although the cow in Washington state was a Holstein, commonly found in American dairy farms, mad cow disease is not passed on in milk. Dairy products remain safe to eat, and U.S. trading partners are not expected to impose any restrictions on them.
The disease does have impacts beyond meat consumption. So concerned about the potential for mad cow disease is the United States that the Food and Drug Administration also banned blood donations from anyone who has spent more than three months in the United Kingdom from 1980 to 1996, the time when the risk of contracting mad cow disease by eating contaminated beef in England was considered greatest.
American beef exports were projected to grow 6 percent this year, an increase fueled in part by neighboring Canada's inability to sell its own beef overseas.
That has contributed to trade frictions between the United States and Canada and has led the U.S. Department of Agriculture to reconsider the ban.
In fact, the USDA was preparing a partial lift of the ban on Canadian beef through a proposed change in rules that could have taken effect as early as Jan. 4. The status of the proposed rule change is now uncertain -- and the politics of the ban are made all the more complicated by the discovery of a similar case on U.S. soil.
It is the first case to be detected in the United States since a system of active surveillance was set up 10 years ago. There have been no U.S. cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease except among Americans who had lived in England during the period when the disease was spreading there.
But many agricultural experts were not surprised that a case of mad cow disease eventually turned up in the United States, because the USDA has stepped up its surveillance to detect it. During a news conference Tuesday, USDA Secretary of Agriculture Anne Veneman said 20,526 head of cattle had been tested for mad cow disease this year, triple the rate in 2002.
UC Davis food safety Professor Cliver said a likely outcome of the discovery of a mad cow disease case in the United States would be a move to the more costly system of testing used in Europe. There, all cows more than 22 years old who are slaughtered have their brain stems removed and sent to a lab for testing. The carcass remains isolated from the food supply and refrigerated until a negative test comes back from the lab.
"This will cost a fortune,'' said Cliver. It is one reason why European beef costs nearly twice as much as that in the United States. "Inevitably, if the food industry is to stay in business, it will have to pass those costs on to the consumer,'' Cliver added.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What causes fatal mad cow disease?
1. A cow eats feed supplemented with sheep bone meal containing infectious proteins called prions. There has been a ban on such rendered feed since 1997.
2. The prions are suspected of corrupting normal protein production.
3. Prions are absorbed by the stomach and are thought to travel along nerve fibers to the brain stem, destroying brain tissue.
4. When humans eat processed meat products that might contain prion- infected tissues, they too can come down with a similar fatal syndrome, dubbed variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. All the various bans on cattle and beef products are designed to eliminate human consumption of the tainted meat. |
