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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_biscuit who wrote (81524)	6/6/2007 5:50:25 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93284

By lowering the bar of testing standards It seems they are doing no such thing. The concern is (at least officially) all the false negatives. People would supposedly believe that the food was safe, but the test the company wants to do, can not actually show the food is safe. the idea behind banning the test is apparently that they will increase safety, by avoiding false negatives. A false negative would could in theory influence someone to fail to take precautions, and wind up getting the disease that they would not otherwise get. ---- "...We understand the interest expressed by some commenters in testing certain cattle for slaughter. However, no live animal tests exist for BSE and the currently available postmortem tests, although useful for disease surveillance (i.e., in determining the rate of disease in the cattle population), are not appropriate as food safety indicators. We know that the earliest point at which current testing methods can detect a positive case of BSE is 2 to 3 months before the animal begins to demonstrate clinical signs. We also know that the incubation period for this disease–the time between initial infection and the manifestation of clinical signs–is generally very long, on the average of about 5 years. Accordingly, we know there is a long period during which, using the current methodology, testing an infected animal that has not demonstrated clinical signs of the disease would, incorrectly, produce negative results. * * * Testing of individual animals, especially if it is performed on clinically normal animals at slaughter, is not in itself an effective risk mitigation measure for protecting public health..."