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Environment News Service – Wednesday – May 23, 2007

U.S. Classified as Controlled Risk for Mad Cow Disease

WASHINGTON, DC, May 23, 2007 (ENS) - The World Organization for Animal Health, OIE, Tuesday unanimously adopted a resolution recommending that the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Taiwan, Chile and Brazil be recognized as having "controlled" risk status for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE, commonly known as mad cow disease.

"This classification confirms what we have always contended - that U.S. regulatory controls are effective and that U.S. fresh beef and beef products from cattle of all ages can be safely traded due to our interlocking safeguards," said Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns.

Found in 26 countries, the fatal brain wasting disease is spread by prions - abnormally shaped proteins that originate as regular components of neurological tissues in animals. They are cellular organisms or viruses, animal health officials say.

The disease spreads through components of cattle feed such as meat and bone meal that contain protein from BSE-infected animals.

Safeguards include a ban on the feeding of meat and bone meal to cattle and the removal during processing of tissues that could harbor the prions.

In a statement, the American Meat Institute, an industry organization, expressed hope that the announcement will restore U.S. beef exports to levels that were at before 2004.

Following the announcement of the first U.S. case of mad cow disease, in December 2003, 53 countries, including major markets such as Japan, Mexico, South Korea, and Canada, banned imports of U.S. cattle and beef products.

To date, two U.S. animals have been found to have mad cow disease, and 11 have been detected in Canada. The OIE reports no cases in Taiwan, Chile or Brazil.

In Switzerland, 464 infected animals have been found since 1990 when the disease first appeared in that country.

Some U.S. cattle producers were disappointed to learn that the USDA did not seek a more favorable disease risk classification for the U.S. cattle industry from the OIE.

"The question of whether the U.S. at least meets OIE’s controlled risk category for BSE has never been disputed," said CEO Bill Bullard of the cattle industry organization R-CALF USA based in Billings, Montana. "The real question is why didn’t USDA seek the more favorable category of a BSE negligible risk country?"

"Under a negligible risk, the most favorable designation of the OIE, a country cannot have had a BSE case born in the previous 11 years," explained Bullard. "The younger of the two BSE cases detected in the U.S. was determined to be 10 years old, and this was more than a year ago. Therefore, as of today, the youngest case detected in the U.S. was born more than 11 years ago, meeting the standard for a BSE negligible risk country."

"The problem with lumping the U.S. into the same category as Canada is that the rest of the world knows that Canada has an inherently higher risk for BSE than the United States, so the U.S. has basically sold itself short," Bullard said.

Speaking from the U.S. Meat Export Federation Board of Directors meeting today in La Jolla, California, Federation President and CEO Philip Seng said the ruling will be useful in generating greater beef trade with many countries, and will set the stage for improving the U.S. BSE status with OIE to "negligible risk" in the future.

Johanns said the federal government will use its newly declared status as "international validation" to urge U.S. trading partners to reopen export markets to the full spectrum of U.S. cattle and beef products.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2007/2007-05-23-09.asp#anchor1

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