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Jan 14, 2004 20:28:28 GMT -5
Post by swatteamequity on Jan 14, 2004 20:28:28 GMT -5
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EMRG
Jan 15, 2004 12:25:56 GMT -5
Post by swatteamequity on Jan 15, 2004 12:25:56 GMT -5
UPI Exclusive: No mad cow tests in Wash. (1) By Steve Mitchell United Press International Published 1/15/2004 11:35 AM View printer-friendly version
WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- Federal agriculture officials did not test any commercial cattle for mad cow disease through the first seven months of 2003 in Washington state -- where the first U.S. case of the disease was detected last month -- according to records obtained by United Press International.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's records of mad cow screenings, conducted on 35,000 animals between 2001 to 2003, also reveal no animals were tested for the past two years at Vern's Moses Lake Meats, the Washington slaughterhouse where the mad cow case was first detected.
In addition, no mad cow tests were conducted during the two-year period at any of the six federally registered slaughterhouses in Washington state. This includes Washington's biggest slaughterhouse, Washington Beef in Topthingyh -- the 17th largest in the country, which slaughters 290,000 head per year -- and two facilities in Pasco that belong to Tyson, the largest beef slaughtering company in the United States.
Nearly every test conducted in Washington over the two-year period was on animals from Midway Meats in Centralia, the packing plant where Vern's Moses sent the infected cow carcass. The meat was distributed to several states where some people apparently consumed it, raising concerns about the possibility of contracting the human equivalent of mad cow, an always fatal, brain-wasting condition known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
The USDA said the meat posed little risk to consumers because the most infectious parts -- the brain and spinal cord -- had been removed.
The testing records, obtained by UPI under the Freedom of Information Act, which the USDA delayed releasing for six months, also show a number of other gaps in the agency's national surveillance strategy for mad cow disease, including:
-- Tests were conducted at fewer than 100 of the 700 plants known to slaughter cattle.
-- Some of the biggest slaughterhouses were not tested at all.
-- Cows from the top four beef producing states, which account for nearly 70 percent of all cattle slaughtered each year in the United States, only accounted for 11 percent of all the animals screened.
-- Though dairy cattle are considered the most likely to develop mad cow, some of the top dairy slaughtering plants were sampled only a few times or not at all.
-- The test tally for 2003 includes more than 1,000 animals ages 24 months or less, which would not test positive for the disease on the test used by the USDA even if they were infected. Many of these animals displayed signs that could indicate mad cow disease, including being downers or unable to stand, and symptoms suggesting a possible brain disorder.
"I can't believe that," Felicia Nestor, food safety program director of the whistleblower organization the Government Accountability Project, in Washington, D.C., said of the USDA's lack of testing in Washington.
Nestor questioned why the USDA would not implement more testing after the finding of a case of mad cow in Alberta, Canada, in May of 2003, in a close border state such as Washington. The records show after May and through July, however, no commercial cows in Washington state were tested.
"It's right near Alberta ... and everybody knows a lot of cattle cross over the border from Canada into the United States," Nestor told UPI. Approximately 1.7 million Canadian cattle entered the United States in 2002.
GAP has followed the mad cow surveillance program closely for several years and Thursday is to release statements from current USDA inspectors, who said the surveillance system is not administered uniformly across the country. In some cases, the inspectors said, the plant personnel -- not USDA veterinarians -- are in charge of selecting which animals go for testing.
"In the interest of transparency, USDA needs to answer the obvious questions raised by these findings," Nestor said.
USDA spokesman Jim Rogers told UPI said some states, such as Washington, may not get tested during some periods of the year because the agency's system is based on sampling from eight regions of the country rather than each state.
Asked if the agency tries to sample from all slaughterhouses, Rogers said, "Not necessarily." Some plants do not take downer cattle so the USDA will not conduct much, if any, testing at these facilities because the agency wants to target the high-risk animals, he said.
In addition, Rogers said, the samples taken each year by the USDA are adequate to detect mad cow if it is present at the rate of one-in-a-million animals.
"As long as they take the required number of samples, they're OK," he said.
Nestor argued the failure to screen any animals for a two-year period at Vern's in Moses Lake, Wash., where a Holstein cow tested positive for mad cow on Dec. 22, raises questions about the ability of the mad cow surveillance program to focus on cows most vulnerable to the disease.
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Jan 15, 2004 12:26:31 GMT -5
Post by swatteamequity on Jan 15, 2004 12:26:31 GMT -5
Part 2 Vern's Moses Lake is known for slaughtering older and injured dairy cows, which are considered the cattle most at risk of developing mad cow disease. The cow that tested positive was a 6.5 year old dairy cow.
Many of the top dairy slaughtering plants around the country either do not appear in the testing records at all or are listed only a couple of times.
Dairy cattle often are given feed supplemented with animal protein to enable them to produce the vast quantities of milk required in today's mass dairy operations. Ranchers in the United Kingdom incorporated cattle tissue into their cow feed because it was a cheap source of protein. This is thought to have contributed to the spread of the mad cow epidemic that hit the country in the 1980s because some of the cattle turned into feed were infected.
Although that practice has been banned in the United States, the ban did not go into effect until 1997 and several feed firms have been and are still in violation. Because cows infected with mad cow disease can take as long as six years before they show symptoms, this raises the possibility that animals infected before or after the feed ban were processed at slaughterhouses such as Vern's Moses Lake, yet were never tested or detected by USDA's surveillance program.
The top four dairy slaughtering states -- Wisconsin, California, Pennsylvania and Minnesota -- slaughter 1.7-million dairy cows each year, or about 67 percent of the 2.6 million butchered annually in the United States. Yet tests were conducted on only 11,794 animals from these states, or less than one-half of 1 percent of the more than 3.4-million dairy cows processed in these states over the two-year period. The actual percentage may be even lower because, presumably, not all of the animals tested in those states were dairy cows.
In Wisconsin, the state that slaughters the most dairy cattle, the bulk of the testing focused on just two firms, with few coming from the four slaughterhouses in the state that process dairy cattle. Only three animals over the course of two years came from Packerland Packing in Green Bay, the fifth largest slaughterhouse in the country, which slaughters some 260,000 dairy cow each year.
Nestor questioned the rationale behind USDA's apparent strategy of ignoring the large beef companies and targeting efforts at smaller plants.
"It's really significant that they're focusing all of their attention on the very smallest plants," she said. "It's almost like the USDA wants to protect the big plants from a finding because the implications would be too scary. If they find a case at a small plant, the USDA can then say it's an isolated problem" and infected meat wasn't distributed all over the country or internationally as might happen with a larger plant, she said.
The findings "don't inspire confidence," said Michael Hansen, senior research associate with the watchdog group Consumers Union in Yonkers, N.Y., who has monitored the government's mad cow strategy closely for a number of years. "It really makes one wonder how useful the whole program is," Hansen said.
Former USDA veterinarian inspectors told UPI the problems with mad cow surveillance may go back more than a decade.
Lester Friedlander, who worked for the agency from 1985 to 1995, said in the early 1990s, when he was the USDA's chief veterinarian inspector at Taylor Foods in Wyalusing, Pa., the plant with largest number of downer cows at the time -- about 25 to 30 a day -- the USDA never asked him for a single brain to test for mad cow.
"From 1991 until the day I left on Aug. 28, 1992, they never asked me for one brain," Friedlander said, noting the facility should have been key in a national mad cow surveillance program because cows from several different states were processed there.
Tom Damura, who spent 12 years with the USDA, said for almost an entire year -- from Feb. 2000 to Dec. 2000 -- no animal was tested for mad cow at an Iowa Beef Packers facility in Amarillo, Texas, where he was the agency's veterinary medical officer.
In addition, due to staffing shortages he was often unable to perform inspection on the animals before they were slaughtered to see if they displayed the staggering and swaying that can indicate mad cow disease. That job fell to an employee of the plant.
The USDA inspectors contacted by the Government Accountability Project will offer similar accounts on Thursday. Some work at the largest slaughtering plants in the country and say they have seen hundreds of downer cows, yet only one or two are ever tested.
The mad cow testing records for 2002 and 2003 appear to support their allegations.
Only about 1,500 animals combined were tested at the top 10 slaughterhouses, which slaughtered nearly 60 million of the 70-million animals killed in the last two years.
In contrast, more than 5,900 animals -- or nearly four times as many as at the larger plants -- were tested from just six slaughtering plants classified by the USDA as small or very small, including one firm with fewer than 10 employees that was sampled 2,011 times over the two-year period.
Of the top four beef producing states -- Nebraska, Kansas, Texas and Colorado -- which slaughter some 24-million cattle or nearly 70 percent of the total annual U.S. slaughter, only 3,694 animals or about 11 percent of all animals tested in the last two years originated from these areas.
Scant testing was done at the top five slaughter companies -- Tyson, Excel, Swift, Farmland National Beef and Smithfield -- which combined slaughter more than 100,000 cows per day, accounting for 78 percent of the U.S. beef industry and $97.3 billion in annual sales.
Only two cows were tested at Excel's facilities in Colorado in 2002, and in 2003, only two were tested from its Nebraska facility.
Only one animal was tested from a Tyson facility in Illinois in 2003 and this was a 24-month-old cow with signs of an unknown brain disorder that probably was too young to test because animals generally do not show up on the test used by the USDA until they are 30 months of age or older. But recent cases in Japan -- which uses a different kind of test than the USDA -- indicate cows as young as 24 months and even younger can carry the disease.
The USDA maintains it tested approximately 20,000 animals in fiscal year 2003, which ended Sept. 30, but the records suggest that may be an inflated number. Through July, the agency had tested 15,139 animals, but this included more than 1,000 animals age 24 months or younger.
Randall Levings, chief pathologist at the USDA's National Veterinary Services Laboratories in Ames, Iowa, which conducts all the agency's mad cow tests, told UPI those animals are not included in the yearly totals because they are considered too young.
Rogers offered a different perspective, however, saying the total test tally should reflect "all the testing done regardless of the age of the animal."
Excluding those animals would drop the total tested to approximately 14,100 through July, meaning the agency would have needed to test approximately 3,000 animals each of the last two months of the fiscal year to have achieved the 20,000 total. Even if the younger animals are left in, it still means the lab would have needed to run 2,500 tests each of the last two months.
Either number would be a Herculean feat, because the most cattle the lab had ever tested in a one month period during fiscal year 2003 was approximately 1,900 in October, 2002.
Even if the lab had been able to pull off such a large number of tests over the two month period, the validity of the results might be questionable since the test it uses, something called an immunohistochemistry test, has to be meticulously prepared to ensure accuracy and is both time and labor-intensive.
Markus Moser, a molecular biologist and CEO of the Swiss firm Prionics, which manufactures rapid tests for detecting mad cow disease, said getting valid results on an IHC test will limit the speed at which they can be processed.
"It's like reading a book sentence by sentence versus just browsing through the pages," Moser said.
Arthur Davis, chief of the biopathology lab at NVSL, told UPI the staff focused on mad cow testing -- about six technicians and eight pathologists -- could process up to 200-300 IHC tests per day, and perhaps more if necessary.
The USDA withheld the results for the tests conducted in 2003 in the documents it provided to UPI, but it said all were negative for mad cow. On Monday, the agency's Freedom of Information Office said it would provide the test results, probably by Tuesday. As of late Wednesday, UPI still had not been given the results.
--
Steve Mitchell is UPI's Medical Correspondent. E-mail sciencemail@upi.com
Copyright © 2001-2004 United Press International View printer-friendly version
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EMRG
Jan 15, 2004 20:26:41 GMT -5
Post by swatteamequity on Jan 15, 2004 20:26:41 GMT -5
Consumer Groups Want More Cattle Testing, Information on Mad Cow By Matthew Daly Associated Press Writer Published: Jan 15, 2004
WASHINGTON (AP) - Consumer and health groups asked Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman on Thursday to immediately increase testing of cattle for mad cow disease and establish a mandatory animal identification system for tracking cows and beef cattle. In a meeting with Veneman, the consumer groups said testing for mad cow should include animals as young as 20 months. USDA has said it would focus on animals 30 months and older since its long incubation period - four to five years - means mad cow typically doesn't show up in younger animals.
In response to the nation's first case of mad cow disease, Veneman said last month she will accelerate a joint government-industry effort to establish an electronic identification program for tracking every cow in the country.
But representatives from the advocacy groups that met with her Thursday - including the American Public Health Association, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Government Accountability Project and Public Citizen - complained the beef industry still has too great a role in the project.
They also asked Veneman to hold a series of public meetings to air concerns about new regulations she announced after the nation's first case of mad cow disease was found last month in a dairy cow slaughtered in Washington state.
"All of the proposals you have made were developed after private meetings with the regulated industries," the consumer groups said in a letter to Veneman.
Alisa Harrison, a spokeswoman for the Agriculture Department, said Veneman did not commit to any proposal, but called the meeting useful.
Meanwhile, Canadian Agriculture Minister Bob Speller said Thursday his country's beef supply is safe and pledged to work with the United States on ways to prevent mad cow disease as a step toward lifting a U.S. ban on Canadian cattle imports. The Washington state Holstein with mad cow has been traced to a Canadian herd that came to the United States in 2001.
Speller, who is scheduled to meet Friday with Veneman and Mexican Agriculture Secretary Javier Usabiaga, said he had no illusions that the United States will immediately lift the ban, imposed last May when the first case of mad cow disease in Canada was found. Still, he said it is critical that the once-thriving cattle trade between the two countries resume as quickly as possible.
Two farm state senators, meanwhile, said that President Bush should use emergency regulations to direct the Agriculture Department to adopt country-of-origin meat labeling.
Sens. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., want rules that say meat from animals born, raised and slaughtered in the United States must be labeled as "100 percent U.S. beef."
The Washington state case "has cast an unfair shadow of uncertainty over the American food industry," since it involved a cow born in Canada, the senators wrote.
White House officials indicated earlier this week they oppose rewriting a House-passed bill that effectively prohibits the Agriculture Department from requiring such labels on meat products. The bill is awaiting final Senate action.
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Associated Press writers Mark Sherman and Jack Sullivan contributed to this story.
AP-ES-01-15-04 1946EST
Copyright 2003 Associated Press
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EMRG
Jan 16, 2004 1:00:28 GMT -5
Post by swatteamequity on Jan 16, 2004 1:00:28 GMT -5
News Release 6/5/2003 08:20 AM Nation's Top Five Beef Processors Select eMerge's VerifEYE Solo(TM) Handheld Meat-Inspection Device As Food Safety Tool * VerifEYE Meat Safety Technology Chosen by Beef Packers Responsible for Producing 80% of Nation's Beef Supply * Portable Solo(TM) Units Purchased for Plant Use Aid in Further Enhancing Packers' Food Safety and Quality Control Programs SEBASTIAN, Fla., June 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- eMerge Interactive, Inc. (Nasdaq: EMRG), a technology company providing food safety, individual-animal tracking and supply-procurement services to the beef-production industry, today announced that the nation's top five beef processors have selected the VerifEYE(TM) Solo(TM) meat-inspection system as a value-added arsenal in their meat quality programs. VerifEYE(TM) Solo(TM) is a lightweight and portable machine-vision system that instantly detects microscopic traces of organic contamination that can harbor bacteria such as E. coli 0157:H7, Salmonella and Listeria. Approximately the size and weight of a video camera (see NATION'S TOP FIVE BEEF PROCESSORS SELECT EMERGE'S VERIFEYE SOLO), the handheld device displays surface contamination at a glance and can be used in meat-processing, distribution and grocery environments, to help workers zero in on organic contamination, ensuring a safer and more wholesome meat product. "National Beef is excited to begin utilizing this new technology," stated Brenden McCullough, Director of Technical Services for Farmland National Beef, a leading U.S. beef processor, as he described their plans to incorporate the VerifEYE Solo handheld inspection device into both of their beef packing plants. McCullough noted that, the technology would be another valuable tool when added to their existing program of food safety technologies, helping to ensure the highest quality products for National Beef customers. "We are very pleased that the industry is beginning to incorporate our VerifEYE(TM) technology in their quality control processes and that it understands the role this technology can play in further expanding the nation's food safety program," stated David C. Warren, eMerge President and Chief Executive Officer. "Not only can meat packers realize immediate benefits in processing procedures, employee effectiveness and product recovery, but distributors, grocers and retailers can also examine incoming supplies and conduct quality audits to ultimately ensure that only the highest standard is delivered to consumers." "The VerifEYE technology helps us see what the human eye can not see and can significantly impact beef-processing quality control measures," said Matt Osborn, a Food Scientist with Excel Corporation, a leading U.S. Beef processor and wholly owned subsidiary of Cargill Incorporated. "It provides us with another verification to ensure our quality remains the highest in the industry." "These five companies, which represent 30 processing plants, account for over 80 percent of the beef marketed in the U.S. and have long been pioneers in the drive to make America's beef the safest in the world," continued Mr. Warren. "When it comes to quality control and food safety, these five have been among the most progressive, innovative and pro-active companies in the U.S. This is one more example of their commitment to deliver beef products of the highest quality." As previously announced, eMerge has selected Bradshaw Manufacturing Services of Palm Bay, Fla., to manufacture the handheld version of its new VerifEYE(TM) meat-inspection system. The price for the VerifEYE(TM) Solo(TM) hand-held system is $7,000 per unit. About eMerge Interactive eMerge Interactive, Inc. is a technology company providing individual- animal tracking, food-safety and supply-procurement services to the $40- billion U.S. beef production industry. The Company's individual animal- tracking technologies include CattleLog(TM), an exclusive data-collection and reporting system that enables beef-verification and branding. The Company's food-safety technologies include VerifEYE(TM), a meat-inspection system that was developed and patented by scientists at Iowa State University and the Agricultural Research Service of the USDA for which eMerge Interactive holds exclusive rights to its commercialization. About Cargill and Excel Cargill is an international marketer, processor and distributor of agricultural, food, financial and industrial products and services with 90,000 employees in 57 countries. The company provides distinctive customer solutions in supply chain management, food applications and health and nutrition. Based in Wichita, Kan., Excel is a leader in providing innovative red meat solutions to customers and consumers. About Farmland National Beef Farmland National Beef is one of the largest beef processors in the U.S and is the only farmer-and-rancher-owned processor in the industry. Based in Kansas City, Mo., the Company provides a unique farm to table system to both farmers and ranchers breeding and raising quality cattle. This release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements containing words such as "anticipates," "believes," "expects," "intends," "may," "will" and words of similar meaning. These statements involve various risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements, including the acceptance by our customers of electronic commerce as a means of conducting business, our ability to grow revenue and margins, our ability to implement our acquisition and expansion strategy, the impact of competition on pricing, the impact of litigation, general economic conditions and other factors discussed in this release and as set forth from time to time in our other public filings and public statements. Readers of this release are cautioned to consider these risks and uncertainties and to not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. For additional information regarding this press release contact Juris Pagrabs, eMerge's Chief Financial Officer, at (772) 581-9741. SOURCE eMerge Interactive, Inc. VerifEYE™ News Excel Corporation Approves Use Of VerifEYE™ ... Click to read more eMerge Selects Exclusive VerifEYE™ Solo™ Distributor ... Click to read more eMerge's New Food Safety Technology to Enter European Beef Industry ... Click to read more eMerge to unveil VerifEYE™ Solo™ Handheld Meat-Inspection Device ... Click to read more Nation's Top Five Beef Processors Select eMerge's VerifEYE Solo™ ... Click to read more Events October 29-November 1, International Meat, Poultry and Seafood Convention McCormick Place, Chicago IL. www.meatami.com Copyright © 2003 eMerge Interactive, Inc. TM Trademark of eMerge Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. Click here for additional
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Jan 16, 2004 14:35:35 GMT -5
Post by swatteamequity on Jan 16, 2004 14:35:35 GMT -5
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Jan 17, 2004 13:42:53 GMT -5
Post by swatteamequity on Jan 17, 2004 13:42:53 GMT -5
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Jan 18, 2004 1:10:53 GMT -5
Post by swatteamequity on Jan 18, 2004 1:10:53 GMT -5
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24223-2004Jan17.html Steps to Safer Beef? Much of What Advocates Propose, Cattlemen and Government Oppose By Margaret Webb Pressler Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, January 18, 2004; Page F01 Food safety has been a top-of-mind issue since the first U.S. case of mad cow disease was discovered just before Christmas. To regular consumers not normally tuned in to debates over the beef industry's production practices, such scary-sounding terms as "downer cattle" and "advanced meat recovery" are new. In fact, though, these and other safety issues are not bursting onto the scene purely as a result of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. Consumer advocates, government officials and industry representatives have been fighting many of these production and food-safety battles for years. Most people agree that the United States has one of the safest food supplies in the world. But food safety can be a moving target as bacteria mutate and industry looks for ways to be as efficient and cost-effective as possible. So, for instance, despite years of criticism, it was only after the BSE incident that the government declared, and industry agreed, that downer cattle -- cows too sick or injured to walk -- would be eliminated from the food supply. Here then are nine other changes that food-safety advocates are calling for from the beef industry, along with the positions of industry groups and government regulators. Make "traceback" mandatory. Had there been a mandatory traceback system in place in the United States on Dec. 23, when mad cow disease was discovered in Washington state, it would have taken hours, not days, to figure out when and where the cow in question was born and possibly what it had eaten. With such an identification program, every cow and bull would be tagged at birth with a radio-frequency or handwritten ear tag, recorded in a national database. Every movement of that animal to and from farms, feedlots and slaughterhouse would be noted. Consumer advocates say this would help identify the origins of not only mad cow disease but also other harmful pathogens, such as listeria, salmonella and the deadly E. coli O157:H7. "Some animals, for a variety of reasons, come to the slaughterhouse with a heavy load of E. coli in their gut and with lots of it on their hide," said Carol Tucker Foreman, formerly a top regulator at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and now director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America. "If you could trace back to the farm those animals that come in that way, you could change on-farm practices and you could probably discover why some animals get in that situation." Last month, the USDA called for a national traceback system. But consumer advocates worry that Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman did not say it would be mandatory, or if it would be administered by government or industry. "The secretary is looking at exactly how we could do this," said USDA spokeswoman Alisa Harrison. "There's a lot of questions that are still on the table." Meanwhile, the livestock industry has been slow to embrace animal traceback, though it has been debated for years. Gary Weber, executive director of regulatory affairs for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, said, "It just takes time, when you've got a million people whose livelihoods are involved, to get in agreement and get movement." Many ranchers are also concerned about privacy issues if the government gets access to farm data, he said. National traceback would also be costly: hundreds of millions of dollars to get it up and running, and tens of millions of dollars a year to keep it operating. Make recalls mandatory. As surprising as it may seem, the USDA has no authority to demand the recall of tainted meat; it can only ask companies to cooperate. And companies do recall meat regularly under this system. J. Patrick Boyle, president of the American Meat Institute, says the industry has a vested interest in moving quickly and thoroughly when meat is found to be unsafe. "It is simply good for business," he said, adding that many recalls are initiated by companies. CONTINUED 1 2 3 4 5 Next > Print This Article
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Jan 18, 2004 1:11:22 GMT -5
Post by swatteamequity on Jan 18, 2004 1:11:22 GMT -5
Page 2 of 5 < Back Next > Steps to Safer Beef?
Critics argue that companies act slowly and not often enough, so they want recalls to be enforced by the government. Currently, the size of each recall is negotiated by the company and agriculture officials, meaning, food-safety groups say, it can take days to order a recall, during which time tainted meat might be sold and consumed.
The two camps fundamentally disagree: The industry says it does make adequate decisions about public safety; consumer groups say it doesn't.
"We did a whole chart at one point about how a recall usually starts small and then grows," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "The reason it grows is the industry usually has the first draft of the press release, but after a week of investigation the USDA finds out there's a lot more meat involved."
CSPI and other consumer groups also want the government to publicly name the companies that have shipped, received or sold recalled meat, information that currently is kept secret. Industry officials say such disclosures would irreparably harm the reputations of good companies. Weber of NCBA cited the example of Beef America of Norfolk, Neb., which was publicly identified as the source of tainted meat in 1997 and eventually closed down.
The USDA would like consumer groups and companies to work out a system they can both live with, and is reviewing whether recalls should be mandatory, the USDA's Harrison said. "There's reasons for it and reasons against it," she said.
Test each carcass.
Meat inspection used to be a visual process, with inspectors looking over every carcass for lesions and obvious problems and stamping each with the USDA seal. But more-recent problems stem from pathogens that cannot be seen. The BSE case has put the spotlight on testing, not inspecting, animal carcasses for disease. Some foreign countries, particularly Japan, want U.S. producers to test every animal, or at least every animal over a certain age, for BSE before they'll reopen their markets to U.S. beef.
Several consumer groups said last week that they had found lapses in training of federal inspectors to even recognize BSE, and assailed the pro-industry nature of BSE testing. Felicia Nestor, food-safety project director at the Government Accountability Project, for example, said the investigation found that in some regions "companies chose which animals will be tested" for BSE.
Beef processors are opposed to the idea of testing every carcass for BSE, arguing that the risk is low compared with the huge cost -- perhaps $70 per carcass. With 35 million cows slaughtered in this country each year, the numbers are indeed dramatic.
But the mad cow case has softened the industry's position on testing. Up until now, it has argued that more checks weren't necessary because no BSE had ever been found in this country. Now industry spokesmen don't object to some additional testing, but how much is under debate.
Consumer and industry groups agree that quicker tests for mad cow disease need to be approved for use in this country. Current tests at U.S. plants take two weeks to yield a result, but other countries have tests that take only hours.
But testing goes way beyond BSE. Consumer groups have been arguing for years that testing of animals for all manner of pathogens should be dramatically increased and regulations tightened.
"We've got a very ad-hoc microbial testing system in place," said Nancy Donley, president of activist group Safe Tables Our Priority, whose 6-year-old son died after eating tainted hamburger. Current testing for E. coli, for example, is not designed to catch the most dangerous strain of the bacteria, E. coli O157:H7. That is tested for with a "limited random sampling program," she said. She further complained that the government does not have to be notified if a plant gets a positive result from its microbial testing.
The USDA says it is reviewing the country's testing program in the wake of the BSE discovery.
Limit the use of antibiotics.
Cattle operations first started using antibiotics on animals decades ago.
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Jan 18, 2004 1:11:50 GMT -5
Post by swatteamequity on Jan 18, 2004 1:11:50 GMT -5
Page 3 of 5 < Back Next > Steps to Safer Beef?
"Back then, resistance to antibiotics was something that nobody had even thought of," said Stephen Sundlof, director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine at the Food and Drug Administration.
But antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections are on the rise in humans, and the scientific community is trying to figure out whether the widespread use of antibiotics in cattle is partly responsible. Clearly, a big part of the problem is the overuse of antibiotics in human medicine. But consumer advocates point also to the common use of antibiotics in animal agriculture as daily therapy to prevent disease.
"What you end up with is resistant bacteria in the animal, which get into the meat at the time of slaughter," said Karen Florini, senior attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund. That resistant bacteria may "teach" bacteria in humans how to be resistant to antibiotics, she said, because bacteria are known to swap genes. Antibiotics also get into the environment through runoff from farms and the animal waste they produce, Florini said, creating more human exposure to resistant bacteria.
Consumer advocates want to greatly scale back the use of animal antibiotics and want the FDA to more forcefully regulate and remove drugs from widespread use. They are especially focused on classes of drugs that have versions used in human medicine, such as fluoroquinolones, a group that includes the human antibiotic Cipro.
The meat industry points out that no data have yet proved a direct relationship between the use of antibiotics on the farm and human drug resistance. "If there isn't a public threat and the economics are not favorable to change those things," said NCBA's Weber, "then why would you make those changes just to satisfy someone's paranoia?"
The FDA must prove a drug is unsafe before it can withdraw that medicine from use. Therefore, it can take a decade or more to remove a drug from the market. It's especially hard to pull drugs that might cause resistant strains of bacteria. "It's very hard to make that one-to-one connection between the use of that drug in animals and the inability of people to be treated with an antimicrobial drug," Sundlof said.
Instead, the FDA has focused on limiting the use of certain drugs "thought to be the most risky," he said. Those efforts don't take as long, although "the companies still have a right to appeal that decision," Sundlof said.
Move inspection out of USDA.
The Department of Agriculture has a dual mission: to promote agriculture and to police it. Consumer groups say it's simply not possible for one body to do both.
"USDA cannot be an effective public health agency because Congress has said your primary responsibility is to promote the production and sale of agricultural products," said former agriculture official Carol Tucker Foreman. The underlying assumption is that the industry has too much sway over the public health efforts the agency makes -- such as negotiating over a recall, doing its own microbial testing or repeatedly appealing decisions to ban certain drugs.
Foreman said the USDA's ties to industry were also evident when the agency asserted that the human food supply was safe after the discovery of BSE in Washington state. "We had a veterinarian telling us there's no human health risk," she said. "How come no one from the Centers for Disease Control or Health and Human Services was there telling us the food supply was safe?"
Just about every consumer group that weighs in on food safety believes there should be a separate food-safety agency that would incorporate the inspection and enforcement functions of both the USDA and FDA into one cohesive authority. The industry is not necessarily opposed to such an agency, but it forcefully defends the USDA's record on food safety.
"The Food Safety and Inspection Service [within the USDA] takes actions based on safety and the public health," said Boyle of the American Meat Institute.
Naturally, the USDA agrees with that assessment. "We feel we have a very strong regulatory system that protects public health," Harrison said.
Clean up the farms.
Reducing food-borne pathogens in the nation's beef supply can, and should, begin on the farm. On this, the industry and its critics agree.
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EMRG
Jan 18, 2004 1:12:20 GMT -5
Post by swatteamequity on Jan 18, 2004 1:12:20 GMT -5
Page 4 of 5 < Back Next > Steps to Safer Beef?
But how to get there is a question that ignites a bitter battle.
The biggest problem consumer advocates see is that farm runoff, tainted wash water and other deficiencies mean cattle manure can get onto fruits and vegetables grown nearby, said DeWaal of CSPI. "We track food-poisoning outbreaks, and 40 percent of the outbreaks linked to fruits and vegetables are from animal pathogens."
Industry critics also cite crowded feedlots and trucks as prime culprits in the disease rates of industrially raised cattle.
Critics credit FDA for producing a list of good agricultural practices, but they're voluntary and therefore not enforceable. "We need an agency that's in charge of food safety on the farm," DeWaal said.
Farm groups bristle at this suggestion. They argue that the prevalence of some pathogens has been decreasing because farms already are getting safer. Farmers say they don't need more regulation, they need financial incentives to develop safety programs that they can't afford on their own.
"If you make it an economic decision, and that economic decision comes down on the side of doing the right thing, it'll work," said Tom Buis, vice president of government relations for the National Farmers Union.
He said $2 billion in proposed annual spending for farm-safety projects was cut in the 2002 farm bill to just $41 million a year.
Eliminate animal products from feed.
In 1997, the FDA banned the addition of cow meat and bone meal to cattle feed. The cannibalistic practice is widely believed to present the greatest risk for the spread of BSE.
Though this feed ban was considered a positive step toward the prevention of mad cow disease, consumer advocates say there are several serious loopholes in the law that endanger animal, and possibly human, health.
Food-safety advocates are concerned that bovine blood collected in the slaughterhouse is processed into a protein-rich powder used as a milk replacer for some calves. This product is considerably cheaper than other milk alternatives, and the industry insists there is no scientific evidence that BSE can be transmitted in blood.
"Our concern is that science-based justification for some decision-making may be losing out," said Rex Runyon, vice president of the American Feed Industry Association. "Decisions should not be politically motivated or based on emotion."
Consumer advocates say it also hasn't been proven that BSE cannot be transmitted in blood products, so why not take the more cautious path? In Europe, blood cannot be fed to cows. Consumer groups also point to the news last month that a British patient had died of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of BSE, after receiving a transfusion from someone infected with the disease.
Food-safety groups say all animal products should be banned from all animal feed. Currently, cattle byproducts can still be used in feed for hogs and chickens. But because hog and chicken byproducts are allowed to be fed back to cows, same-species food is still a possibility. "Bottom line, there are ways that ruminants -- cows and sheep -- are going to eat ruminants, even with this feed ban," said Patty Lovera, deputy director of Public Citizen.
Food-safety advocates, though, acknowledge that disallowing the recycling of animal waste raises the question of what to do with it.
The feed industry is arguing for stricter regulation and enforcement, but not an outright ban on animal products in feed. Sundlof of the FDA said the agency is considering changes to the feed ban, and the loophole issues critics complain about "are still clearly on the table."
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EMRG
Jan 18, 2004 1:12:47 GMT -5
Post by swatteamequity on Jan 18, 2004 1:12:47 GMT -5
Page 5 of 5 < Back Steps to Safer Beef?
Limit "advanced meat recovery."
The USDA, as part of new regulations aimed at stemming the possible spread of BSE, has banned certain uses of advanced meat recovery, a controversial mechanized system that gets the last bits of meat off small and odd-shaped cattle bones through grinding and sifting. USDA said AMR can no longer be used on head, neck and back bones in cattle over 30 months of age. It set those guidelines because tissues of the central nervous system, brain and spinal cord are the primary infection sites for BSE, and most BSE infections don't show up until cows are older.
But the new safeguards don't go far enough for most consumer groups, which want to see AMR banned around the spinal columns of animals of all ages.
"We don't have a test that will show the presence of this disease in animals younger than 20 months, but that doesn't mean it's not there," said Foreman of the Consumer Federation of America. BSE has been found in cattle as young as 21 months old.
The industry opposes expanding the ban. It says AMR keeps processing plants from having to use people to do the intricate meat extraction from these complicated bones, which can cause repetitive motion injuries to workers. Officials also argue for its safety.
"Before backbones enter AMR systems, the spinal cord is removed," said Boyle of the American Meat Institute. "Meat derived from AMR systems is safe."
DeWaal of CSPI said removing the spinal column is hard to do perfectly with no contamination of surrounding tissues. In fact, USDA tests have shown that 35 percent of the meat tested from AMR systems contains some central nervous system tissue.
"It produces a small fraction of the ground beef we eat, but it's not required to be labeled and it introduces an unnecessary risk," DeWaal said.
Harrison of the USDA said the debate isn't over. "There is a 90-day comment period during which we are taking public comments" on the new rule, she said.
Mandate country-of-origin labeling.
The fight over this labeling issue will come to a head on Tuesday when hundreds of farmers and farm lobbyists will converge on Washington. Their goal will be to persuade senators to keep alive legislation mandating that all fruits, vegetables and meat be labeled with their country of origin.
The country-of-origin labeling, or COL, law, was passed by Congress in the 2002 farm bill and should become effective this September. But a provision in the fiscal 2004 omnibus legislation package before the Senate on Tuesday would delay country-of-origin labeling for two years. Farmers want to get that provision stricken from the omnibus bill.
The National Farmers Union says country-of-origin labeling will give domestic farmers a marketing advantage because American consumers will want to purchase U.S.-raised beef over beef from other countries. Currently, they argue, many shoppers believe anything with a USDA stamp on it is domestically produced. But that's not so.
Food-safety advocates have become big supporters of the bill, too, arguing the COL law would give consumers the food-safety information they need. If consumers know where something is from, they can avoid products from countries that have had problems with contaminations or disease outbreaks.
"It's a basic right-to-know issue," said Lovera of Public Citizen.
The major cattle and meat-processing groups are fighting the legislation.
"The USDA has estimated that it would cost a huge amount of money at a time when the industry is already dealing with the cost of BSE," said Weber of NCBA. "It's just a bad time to try to do something on top of that."
He said the industry would willingly implement a voluntary program to "find out where the costs are and if it's a marketing advantage or not."
USDA spokeswoman Harrison said the agency is moving forward as mandated by the 2002 farm bill. "There are some people that are trying to delay its implementation," she said, "but that's up to Congress."
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EMRG
Jan 18, 2004 19:17:58 GMT -5
Post by swatteamequity on Jan 18, 2004 19:17:58 GMT -5
New research indicates human form of mad cow more complex than first thought Sun Jan 18, 4:05 PM ET CHRIS MORRIS (CP) - New research suggests that the human form of mad cow disease is a lot more complicated than originally thought, and, potentially, much scarier. Scientists have long agreed that eating cattle tissue infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy - mad cow disease - can cause the human form of the disease, known as variant Creutzfeld-Jacob disease. But recent animal tests indicate that eating infected beef may also cause another form of the disease, classical CJD, forcing scientists to re-examine assumptions about the nature of the deadly disease and raising fears that it may be more widespread than previously thought. "We have to be a little bit open-minded about this," says Dr. Laura Manuelidis, professor and head of neuropathology at Yale University in Connecticut. "There are certain things we don't know and we can't be absolute about. We can't make believe it's a cut-and-dried situation." The accepted wisdom has been that classical CJD has nothing to do with mad cows. It affects older people, those over 55, and generally occurs spontaneously at the rate of about one person per million per year. It has been confused with Alzheimer's disease (news - web sites) and there is some concern that because of misdiagnosis, it may be more widespread than the confirmed numbers indicate. "The fact is in the United States, the autopsy rate has gone way down from when I was a medical student, even in academic centres," says Manuelidis. "If you don't examine the brains, how can you possibly know what you are missing?" New variant CJD, the form that has ravaged Britain since 1995, affects people at a much younger age, normally in their 20s and 30s. It is widely believed that only this form can be triggered by consuming infected meat. Both forms riddle the brain with holes, causing dementia and, ultimately, death. Manuelidis says a recent study in Britain involving mice whose brains were genetically engineered with human genes gives weight to her long-held theory that classical CJD may be more insidious than assumed. The mice were injected with tissue from mad cows. One set of mice fell sick with the human form of mad cow, or variant CJD. But, in a finding that shocked researchers, a few of the mice developed what looked like classical CJD, the form scientists have long believed had no relationship to mad cows or eating meat. Dr. Neil Cashman, a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, describes the findings as "striking and worrisome." The question is, could an epidemic of classical CJD be lying dormant in the brains of people who have eaten infected cattle products - specifically products containing brain or spinal cord matter? Cashman says data from Britain shows that the incidence of classical CJD remained stable during the variant CJD epidemic in that country, which killed 146 people. However, there still could be trouble down the road. "The huge exposure of the U.K. population to BSE (news - web sites) prions has clearly resulted in an epidemic of variant CJD," Cashman says. "There may be another one brewing down the road of classical CJD, but it hasn't been seen yet." Manuelidis says it is the future that's worrisome. She hopes fellow researchers will open their minds when it comes to CJD. "It worries me when people get very absolute about these things," she says. "The CDC (Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta) didn't listen to me when I said, 'Why are you just looking at people under 40 years old (for variant CJD)? What makes you think that someone who is older is not going to get this?' Fine, it's obvious that it shouldn't have been in those younger people in such numbers. But the older people who get it may not show the same lesions." Manuelidis says there may be people walking around who have the infectious BSE agent, possibly in high enough levels to be transmissible through blood transfusions or organ donations, but not show signs of the disease and perhaps not show signs of the disease for a long time. "There is a case now in England linked to a blood transfusion, someone who got (variant) CJD in a blood transfusion from a patient who was perfectly fine, but is now confirmed to have variant CJD," she says. "This is the issue." Cashman says that looking at the situation in North America, where there have been only isolated mad cows and no home contracted cases of variant CJD, he doubts there are yet any cases of classical CJD caused by BSE infection. "It's extremely unlikely because we have seen no variant CJD here," he says. Still, Manuelidis says both the United States and Canada should improve their investigation and reporting of CJD cases to get a better handle on its occurrence. story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cpress/20040118/ca_pr_on_na/mad_cow_fears_1
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EMRG
Jan 19, 2004 11:34:27 GMT -5
Post by swatteamequity on Jan 19, 2004 11:34:27 GMT -5
Japan warns another mad cow case can occur in US Mon Jan 19, 2:59 AM ET Add Business - AFP to My Yahoo! TOKYO, (AFP) - Japan's farm ministry has warned US measures to prevent BSE (news - web sites)-infected beef entering the food chain are not enough to persuade Japan to lift its import ban and further cases of mad cow disease could turn up in the United States in future. AFP/Getty Images/File Photo Reuters Slideshow: Mad Cow Disease Related Quotes DJIA NASDAQ ^SPC 10600.51 2140.46 1139.83 +46.66 +31.38 +7.78 delayed 20 mins - disclaimer Quote Data provided by Reuters "What the United States has presented as (safety) measures are not deemed sufficient," Mamoru Ishihara, the vice minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, told a news conference. He was speaking after the ministry published a report on bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in the United States, which stated, "There is no guarantee that BSE will not occur in the United States hereafter." The report was based on findings by a team of government officials who returned here on Sunday after a 11-day tour of the United States and Canada following the discovery of the first BSE case in the United States last month. Japan, the largest export market for US beef, was among the first of more than 30 nations to ban US beef imports after the discovery. The report is likely to serve as the basis for a meeting of Japanese and US farm officials here this week, focusing on Washington's calls for Tokyo to resume beef imports from the United States quickly. The meeting is expected to be held on Thursday, according to press reports. "We will hold talks on the basis that they (the United States) will screen all cows and remove all specified risk materials," Ishihara added. Among specified risk materials are the brain, spinal cord and eyes which contain the agent that may transmit the disease. Japan has been screening every slaughtered cow for BSE since October 2001, a month after it became the only Asian country to have confirmed BSE in its own herd. It confirmed its ninth case last November. The farm ministry said that the Holstein cow found with BSE in the state of Washington was born in the Canadian province of Alberta in April 1997 and reared there before it was shipped to the United States in September 2001 along with 80 other cows from the province. The fact-finding team was made up of three veterinarians from the farm ministry and one food expert each from the Food Safety Commission and the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. They consulted with officials at the US Department of Agriculture and the US Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) as well as the regional governments in Washington State and Alberta. They also inspected meat processing plants there. Meanwhile, the ministry said that the retail prices of both domestic and imported beef in Japan rose in the January 13-16 period to record highs since it started compiling such statistics last August. The price of imported beef rose 2.6 percent from a month earlier to 352 yen (3.3 dollars) per 100 grams on average nationwide, the ministry said. The price of domestic beef rose 1.3 percent to 663 yen per 100 grams. Email Story Post/Read Msgs Print Story Ratings: Would you recommend this story? Not at all 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 Highly -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Next Story: Anti-globalisation forum seeks alternatives to world economic order (AFP) More Business - Top Stories Stories · France Telecom to Cut 14,500 Jobs (AP) · France Telecom to slash 14,500 jobs (AFP) · EU Fights On For Cut-Price Medicines Despite Court Ruling (Dow Jones) · Do-It-Yourself Fund (Forbes.com) · "I Can't Sleep" (BusinessWeek Online) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sponsored LinksBovines on eBay Find bovine items at low prices. With over 5 million items for sale every day, you'll find all kinds of unique things on eBay - the World's Online Marketplace. www.ebay.com 100% Sterile Bovine Colostrum Colostrum regulates and strengthens the immune system, combats bacteria, viruses, yeast and fungi, improves athletic performance. store.yahoo.com Colostrum - Free Shipping High quality New Zealand bovine Colostrum. Free multi-vitamins and free shipping with every order. Increase immune and growth factors. healthproducts-usa.com ( What's this? ) Business Education • Online MBA programs • Browse All Business Programs from Yahoo! Education story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040119/bs_afp/japan_us_madcow_040119085950
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EMRG
Jan 20, 2004 0:18:52 GMT -5
Post by swatteamequity on Jan 20, 2004 0:18:52 GMT -5
www.14wfie.com/Global/story.asp?S=1607740Japan Not Ready to Lift Ban on U.S. Beef Japan Not Ready to Lift Ban on U.S. Beef Japanese agriculture officials say they have no plans to lift their ban against U.S. beef, following the diagnosis of mad cow disease in a Washington state Holstein last month. A Japanese team that returned home Monday from an 11-day visit to the United States and Canada said cattle in both countries were still vulnerable to an outbreak of the illness, the Associated Press reports. Japan, the world's largest importer of U.S. beef, banned Canadian beef after a case of mad cow disease was discovered in Alberta eight months ago. The infected U.S. cow also came from Alberta. U.S. and Canadian officials are urging Japan to lift the bans, saying they have taken the steps necessary to protect their beef. But the Japanese officials say those measures aren't enough, the AP reports. Mad cow disease is thought to be spread by recycling meat and bones from infected animals back into cattle feed. U.S. officials have prohibited giving it to cattle but still allow it to be fed to other livestock, the news service says. Scientists believe people who eat the brain or central nervous system from an infected cow can develop a variant illness called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. It was blamed for 143 deaths in Britain during a mad cow disease outbreak in the 1980s. -----
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