U.S. Ag Secretary Defends Mad Cow Policies to Congress

By J.R. Pegg

WASHINGTON, DC, January 28, 2004 (ENS) - The U.S. beef supply is the safest in the world and new rules adopted in the wake of the nation's first case of mad cow disease are further enhancing "our already strong safeguards," U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman told the Senate Agriculture Committee on Tuesday.

Veneman said the Bush administration is working "diligently" to reopen export markets closed to U.S. beef because of the mad cow scare, but had few answers for what might convince nations skeptical of U.S. beef safety to reverse their course.

The announcement December 23, 2003 that a cow in Washington state had tested positive for mad cow disease has had stark repercussions for the $27 billion U.S. cattle industry, as more than 40 nations have blocked imports of U.S. beef.

"We urge our trading partners to resume trade based on sound scientific principals," Veneman told the committee.

Mad cow disease, officially known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), spreads from one animal to another by consumption of feed that has been contaminated by protein - such as blood or meat meal - from an infected animal.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman. (Photo courtesy USDA)

The U.S. government banned the use of cattle remains in feed for cattle, goats and sheep in August 1997 and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) moved to tighten regulations last month to help prevent high risk tissues from entering the human food chain.

Some 90 percent of U.S. beef is consumed domestically, but the export market is lucrative for the industry. Japan, for example, imported some $1 billion of U.S. beef last year.

Now U.S. officials are struggling to assure trading partners that their testing and oversight are adequate.

Veneman said the trail has run cold on many of the herd mates of the Washington state dairy cow infected with the fatal brain wasting disease. DNA tests have proved that the infected cow was born on a dairy farm in Canada.

The USDA has found only 28 of the 82 herd mates of that cow; 14 of these animals are part of a subgroup of 25 that were born a year before or after the infected cow.

The animals in that subgroup are considered more at risk than the others and were the focus of USDA's investigation, Veneman said.

"Our tracing efforts to date have been responsible," Veneman said, but she acknowledged, "it is unlikely we will find all remaining animals."

It is likely the remaining animals have been turned into hamburger that has already made its way into the food chain - the fate of the six year old cow found to be infected with the disease.

The USDA is in the process of developing a "verifiable system of national animal identification," Veneman said, and is awaiting recommendations by an independent panel of international experts.

Several committee members, including Senator Patrick Leahy, urged the USDA to press forward with this system.

"The BSE discovery has demonstrated the need for a national individual animal identification system in this country," said, Leahy, a Vermont Democrat. "At present there is no mandated national system of tracking animal movements."

Beef carcasses in a slaughterhouse (Photo courtesy EFSIS)

Veneman said that although the United States imposed a ban on Canadian beef last May after a Canadian cow was found to have BSE, it is time for nations to consider revising the policy.

The discovery of a single cow infected with mad cow disease should not prompt trading partners to impose bans, Veneman told the committee, and trade regulations that allow such bans "should be relooked at."

"We cannot allow nations to block our products under the guise of BSE," agreed Senator Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican. "Beef is still what is for dinner."

Kansas Republican Senator Pat Roberts, who donned a pro-beef industry baseball cap during some of the hearing, questioned the call by other nations - in particular Japan - for the United States to test all slaughtered cattle.

"Such suggestions may not be based on science and may result in a tremendous new burden on the economy," Roberts said.

Japan tests each and every cow slaughtered for beef in the country, about 500,000 animals per year. Some 36 million cattle are slaughtered annually in the United States - 20,000 were tested in 2003 for BSE.

Veneman said the Bush administration is committed to testing "in accordance with internationally recognized standards."

The agriculture secretary said the administration plans to double the number of cattle tested to 40,000 this year, but added "even with 20,000 we were way in excess of guidance."

Democrats on the committee noted that European countries test up to 25 percent of their beef animals. They cited an analysis of USDA records by United Press International found that fewer that 100 of the 700 U.S. plants that slaughter cattle tested any cows at all over the past two years.

"With the current level of testing we have no idea of the prevalence of BSE in America," said Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat.

Veneman told the committee that any other country exporting beef to the United States must ban sick or injured cattle from their supply.

Despite its prior opposition to the policy, the administration approved the ban on "downer" cattle in December in the wake of the U.S. mad cow discovery.

Senator Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, expressed concern the downer ban was based on "loose science."

"We know that downers are high risk," Veneman responded. "Of the cows found to be infected in other countries, it was much more prevalent in downer animals than in other animals. It is clearly a decision that can be defended in an international setting."

Missouri Republican Senator James Talent said the U.S. ban on downer cattle could be "counterproductive" because beef producers might opt simply to slaughter the animals and not have them tested.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Tuesday it plans to ban the use of material from downer cattle - and the brain, skull, eyes and spinal cord of cattle 30 months or older - in dietary supplements and cosmetics.

Tuesday's hearing came one day after the FDA tightened rules on livestock feed manufacturers, including a ban on the use in cattle feed of animal blood, leftover restaurant meat, and poultry litter, which often contains fecal matter.

"I do not know why chicken fecal matter was ever allowed to be fed to cattle," said Senator Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat.

The close integration between the U.S. and Canadian beef industries is proving a tricky problem for agriculture officials on both sides of the border. (Photo courtesy Factory Farm Project)

But the FDA defends U.S. animal feed practices. "Our existing firewalls are effective and our new ones will enhance that security," FDA Deputy Commissioner Lester Crawford told the committee. "No country has stepped forward with a more bold or aggressive program."

Senator Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, questioned the proposal to ban the use of animal blood.

"Feeding bovine blood to cattle will not spread BSE," Grassley said.

Crawford responded that concern about blood "has changed in the last few weeks" because of a case from the United Kingdom where a person appears to have contracted vCJD through a blood transfusion.

"This has caused shockwaves around the globe," Crawford said.