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Chicago Tribune Monday January 15, 2007
6:32 p.m. CST
Mad cow 'minimum
risk' from Canadian beef, U.S. says
By Stephen J. Hedges
Washington
Bureau
WASHINGTON --
Coming to the aid of an American meat industry suffering from lost foreign
markets, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has proposed lifting its ban on the
import of cheaper cattle from Canada, despite Canada's discovery of eight cases
of mad cow disease since 2003, including five in 2006 alone.
USDA officials say that a recently completed risk assessment of Canada's beef
raising and feeding practices shows that U.S. consumers face "minimum risk" from
the renewed import of Canadian cattle to the U.S.
Mad cow
disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), is fatal to cattle and to
humans who consume parts of cattle that contain a protein that spreads the
disease. It is believed that cattle contract the disease by consuming feed made
with the byproducts of slaughtered animals infected with the disease.
The USDA is accepting comments on its proposed removal of the ban until March
12, after which the department will make a final decision on whether to adopt
the proposed rule.
Consumer advocates and some cattle ranchers oppose the new Canadian import
proposal, arguing that the new rule is driven by the needs of large meat packing
corporations, and that its food safety logic is deeply flawed.
"We know that Canada has a higher risk profile for BSE than does the United
States," said Bill Bullard, chief executive officer of R-CALF, which stands for
the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund. "Therefore the Unites States should
maintain strict controls, including segregation, to ensure that Canada's problem
does not become transferred to the United States."
Other meat industry groups, however, argue that there are adequate safeguards to
allow the imports.
"You can speculate about many, many things, and that's exactly what R-CALF is
doing," said James Hodges, president of the American Meat Institute Foundation.
"I choose not to speculate. I choose to deal with what I know. What I do know is
that we have a very safe food supply and the risk to human health is virtually
zero."
Britain experienced a mad cow outbreak in the mid-1980s, raising concerns about
transmission of the disease to humans who consume beef. The discovery of mad cow
in Canada in May 2003, and the subsequent discovery of a diseased cow in
Washington state in December 2003 that cow had been imported from Canada
sent shock waves through the American beef industry.
After the discoveries, 53 countries, including high consumption markets like
Japan and South Korea, forbade the import of American beef, though Japan
recently allowed U.S. beef back in.
The National Cattlemen's Beef Association notes that, while U.S. beef exports
are beginning to return, beef exports in the first half of 2006 were $1.1
billion about 50 percent of what they were for a six month period before the
2003 discovery of Mad Cow in the U.S. Japan, South Korea, China and Russia all
have allowed a portion of U.S. beef imports back into their markets.
No humans are known to have contracted a deadly disease that is related to BSE
in cattle in the U.S.
After the 2003 discoveries, the Agriculture Department banned the import of
Canadian beef and live cattle. It also launched a broader BSE testing program.
In 1997, the U.S. and Canada instituted animal feed safeguards in attempt to
stop the spread of BSE.
During its expanded testing, USDA discovered two more BSE cases in the U.S., one
in Alabama and one in Texas. In all, about 787,000 cattle have been tested since
June 2004, according to the agency. Industry officials say the U.S. beef herd is
about 100 million head of cattle.
Recently the department scaled back its testing to about 40,000 cows a year,
according to cattle industry officials.
The loss of Canadian beef was a blow to large companies that slaughter and sell
beef for the U.S. market. The industry is dominated by large companies such as
Tyson, Cargill's Excel Meats, Smithfield Foods and ConAgra Foods.
The larger companies, which control about 80 percent of the U.S. market, would
benefit from a resumption of the Canadian imports, which will provide a source
of cheaper live cattle and possibly in the near future, the import of processed
beef.
"A lot of these cows end up going into lean trim for ground beef products," said
Jay Truitt, vice president of government affairs for the National Cattlemen's
Beef Association. That could mean that the most direct effect could be lower
ground beef prices in the United States.
USDA allowed the renewed importing of younger Canadian cattle those less than
30 months of age beginning in 2005. BSE is thought to manifest itself as
cattle grow older. Scientists have had difficulty finding the disease in younger
cattle, while experience has shown that positive tests for BSE increase in
cattle older than 30 months.
Truitt said that about 30 percent of Canada's 6 million cattle will not be
eligible for import to the U.S. once the new proposal in place.
If adopted
after the required comment period, the Canada cattle import rule is bound to
re-ignite a legal battle between the Agriculture Department and the smaller band
of independent ranchers, cattle feedlot operators and meat producers represented
by groups like Bullard's independent-minded R-CALF.
The group sued in 2005 to block USDA's initial plan to allow the import of
younger cattle. A federal court injunction to block those imports was overturned
on appeal and the case continues in federal court.
R-CALF
contends the large beef packing companies dominate the industry and cattle
prices, and they contend that new Canadian imports will drive down the cost of
their own cattle.
"Our organization will aggressively oppose the implantation of this rule and we
will work with Congress and the Department of Agriculture and, if necessary, we
will litigate this issue," said Bullard. "We believe USDA is exposing our
industry to unnecessary and avoidable risks."
The USDA rule is also bound to renew disagreements between government and
consumer groups over the USDA's efforts to detect mad cow in the U.S.
Michael Hansen, a scientist with Consumer's Union, which publishes Consumer
Reports, said that there are dangerous loopholes in the USDA safeguards to
prevent BSE-diseased animal parts from finding their way into animal feed.
Hansen also contends that the Agriculture Department is intent on proving that
there is no BSE in the U.S., not on detecting it in U.S. cattle.
"Ultimately they don't want to find anything," Hansen said. "That first animal
that they found infected in Washington state, that was completely by accident."
Hansen was one of several consumer representatives involved in an effort to
force the USDA to continue BSE tests on brain specimens from a suspect Texas cow
in 2005.
Initial tests of the cow in Texas in November 2004 suggested that it had been
infected with BSE. The results were sent to a USDA lab in Ames, Iowa, where a
more thorough test produced a negative result. But a second, unofficial test by
the lab supported the positive Texas results.
While some scientists would have continued testing to determine whether BSE was
present, the USDA did not. But Hansen and other consumer advocates raised the
issue with the department's inspector general, who ordered that further tests be
done in England.
Those tests confirmed that the Texas cow was infected with BSE, which the USDA
then announced publicly.
Truitt, said that the USDA's testing practices have been rigorous, and that
redundant government firewalls have kept BSE from infecting U.S. cattle and
reaching consumers.
"We did an extensive amount of testing for the highest risk animals," said
Truitt. "If we are going to find a problem, we would have found it."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/custom/newsroom/chi-070115madcow,1,4468187.story
Copyright ©
2007, Chicago Tribune
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