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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lurqer who wrote (39589)	3/15/2004 10:43:53 PM
From: laura_bush	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Yeah, I care. The real one could care LESS. "lb"

To: lurqer who wrote (39589)	3/15/2004 10:49:41 PM
From: lurqer	Respond to of 89467

Under pressure, the Dept. of Agriculture relents. USDA to expand testing for mad cow By DAVID WHITNEY The Department of Agriculture, under pressure to step up testing for mad cow disease after an ill animal was discovered at a Washington state slaughterhouse in December, announced Monday a dramatic increase in its testing program. Under the plan announced by Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, the number of animals will grow to more than 220,000 - a tenfold increase over current rates but still only a tiny fraction of the cattle slaughtered annually for the domestic and export markets. "We are committed to ensuring that a robust U.S. surveillance program continues in this country," Veneman said. But critics charged that the USDA's plan may not go far enough, in part because it is aimed at gathering scientific data for 12 to 18 months and will not necessarily be focused on ensuring that U.S. beef is disease free. "It is a small step in the right direction, but there are a lot of unknowns here," said Felicia Nestor, food safety project director for the Government Accountability Project, a government watchdog organization. "The purpose of this is not for food safety," she said. "But our international partners and U.S. consumers want food testing, and they are willing to pay more for beef to get it. The consuming public wants to know that the beef they buy has been tested and is certified to be BSE free." BSE, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is the scientific name for the disease that strikes the central nervous system in older cattle. Last year the government tested the tissue from 20,543 cattle, most of which could not walk or stand when they were delivered to the slaughterhouses, an indication of the debilitating disease. Under the program announced Monday, the number of tested animals will rise to roughly 220,000, and perhaps more. It will target older cattle that are the most likely to show signs of the disease, which can take 30 months or so after birth to become detectable. Because the USDA has now banned cattle that cannot walk or stand from the human food chain, the expanded testing program is looking beyond slaughterhouses for its samples, and now will be sampling tissues taken from dead cattle at rendering facilities, farms, veterinary laboratories, public health labs and livestock auctions. To help pay for the testing, Veneman said $70,000 would be transferred from the agency's Commodity Credit Corp. The agency said that by sampling more than 200,000 animals, it would be able to increase its confidence to 95 percent that BSE-infected animals are being detected. The apparently normal animals that will be sampled will come from the 40 U.S. slaughterhouses that process 86 percent of the aged cattle for human consumption, the agency said. The USDA hopes to have the program in operation by June 1. After a year, it will determine whether to extend it another six months. Even with the numbers of animals that will be sampled under this short-term program, however, only a tiny fraction of the cattle slaughtered for meat will be examined. Roughly 35 million cattle are slaughtered annually in the United States. The agency plans to create a national network of state and university laboratories that can test samples within 48 hours of an animal's slaughter. Positive samples will be sent to the agency's laboratory in Ames, Iowa. The National Cattlemen's Beef Association pledged its full cooperation with the expanded program. "We recognize that identification of BSE in an imported cow from Canada in Washington state has hastened interest in increased BSE testing," said the association's chief executive officer, Terry Stokes. "We support a large, one-time sampling." Since the discovery of the disease in December, nearly 50 countries have banned the import of U.S. beef and some major importers, including Japan and South Korea, said they will not resume importation until all beef slaughtered in the United States is tested and certified. abqtrib.com lurqer