Getting some exposure now.
Mad Cow Case Bolsters New York Lawsuit, Lawyer Says
Wed Dec 24, 1:47 PM ET Add U.S. National - Reuters to My Yahoo!
By Gail Appleson, Law Correspondent
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The first U.S. case of mad cow disease will strengthen a recently reinstated lawsuit against the government aimed at stopping the sale of "downed" animals for human food, a lawyer in the case said on Wednesday.
Reuters Photo
"Downed" is an industry term describing livestock that collapse and are unable to stand up, usually for unknown reasons.
Just last week the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York reversed a trial court's finding that the plaintiffs in the suit could not sue the U.S. Department of Agriculture (news - web sites) because there had never been a reported case of mad cow disease in the United States.
The appeals panel disagreed and said the plaintiffs did not need to point to a domestic case of the disease to allege a credible risk of harm. The panel sent the case back to the district judge for further proceedings.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said on Tuesday the disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE (news - web sites), had been found in a single Holstein cow in Washington state.
"It will certainly strengthen our case," said Sheldon Eisenberg, a Santa Monica, Calif. lawyer who filed the suit. He is representing Farm Sanctuary, an animal protection group that runs shelters in New York and California, and Fordham University professor Michael Baur.
Baur said that he was suing as "a regular consumer of meat products" concerned about the risk of mad cow disease.
Eisenberg said the government had argued that the case should be thrown out because the plaintiffs' claims were too speculative. "This report now removes that argument," he said.
Without deciding the merits of the case, the district judge concluded that since there had not been a case of mad cow disease in the United States, the risk to the food supply was too hypothetical to allow the plaintiffs to sue the USDA.
The plaintiffs argued in the suit that downed livestock are likely to be infected with BSE because it causes animals to lose coordination and ability to stand.
Under current USDA regulations, downed livestock may be used for human consumption after passing a mandatory post-mortem inspection by a veterinary officer. |
