Congress, Japan review USDA Mad Cow safeguards

Reuters Health - 21 January 2004
 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration on Wednesday will argue the case for American beef, under a cloud due to the discovery of mad cow disease, before two audiences an ocean apart - the U.S. Congress and the Japanese government.

U.S. agriculture and health officials are in Tokyo this week trying to persuade Japan to relax a ban on American beef that was imposed just after the Dec. 23 finding of mad cow disease in a Holstein slaughtered in Washington state.

Japan normally is the largest foreign buyer of American beef, importing around $1 billion worth a year.

Closer to home, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman is scheduled to testify before a less skeptical audience, the House of Representatives Agriculture Committee.

Veneman's testimony will be her first to a congressional committee since the domestic mad cow crisis began. The Senate Agriculture Committee will hold a similar hearing on Jan. 27, with both Veneman and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Mark McClellan testifying.

Mad cow disease has been linked to about 140 human deaths from the human version of the disease, mostly in Europe, which suffered a rampant outbreak starting in the 1980s.

The USDA tightened some of its safeguards against the disease following the discovery of the Washington state case.

All "downer cattle" - animals that arrive for slaughter unable to walk - have been banned from food production. The USDA also has prohibited some cattle parts, including small intestines, from the food chain out of fears they could carry the abnormal protein associated with mad cow disease.

But consumer groups complain that the USDA has been slow to act and that the federal government needs to do more. Some groups want to shift meat inspections out of the farmer-friendly USDA to an agency that they think would worry less about agriculture industry interests and more about food safety.

The USDA has fended off such suggestions in the past.

Rep. Gary Ackerman, a New York Democrat, was scheduled to launch another attempt on Wednesday to ban the use of all downer animals, not just cattle, from the human food chain.

Federal officials are still trying to identify cattle that may have been associated with the sick Washington state cow, which was born in Canada. Six U.S. cattle herds have been quarantined so far.