Texas Cow

[CattleAnnie]

I've got some interesting articles to post. Thought some might like to read them. Let me know what you think.

New York Times
Calls for Federal Inquiry Over Untested Cow
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

Published: May 6, 2004


Consumer groups called for a Congressional investigation yesterday into the death of a cow with symptoms of brain damage at a Texas slaughterhouse last week.

The cow, which staggered and collapsed after passing an initial visual inspection at Lone Star Beef in San Angelo, Tex., was condemned as unfit for human consumption and under federal regulations should have been tested for mad cow disease.

Instead, it was sent to a rendering plant to be made into animal food and byproducts.

The Consumers Union, the Center for Food Safety and the Government Accountability Project said yesterday that they wanted Congress to look into why the cow was not tested and the possibility that federal officials ordered that no test be done.

Consumer groups have regularly accused the Agriculture Department of trying to avoid finding more mad cow disease because of the damage it would do to the beef industry. Former beef industry officials hold high positions in the department.

The department said yesterday that failing to take a sample was a mistake and that it would investigate. Its inspector general's office said it would do its own inquiry.

The consumer groups were reacting to an article published yesterday by meatingplace.com, a meat industry Web site. Citing two anonymous sources, it said it had firsthand knowledge of the events, one in government and one in industry. The article said a federal inspector had started to take a brain sample but was ordered not to by the regional headquarters of the Agriculture Department in Austin, Tex.

Ed Loyd, a department spokesman, said he could not comment on the report.

A spokeswoman for the slaughterhouse said yesterday that the federal inspectors had discussed taking a sample but decided against it. The spokeswoman, Rosemary Mucklow, executive director of the National Meat Association, which represents meatpackers, said they did not explain why or describe a discussion with the Austin office.

The federal inspectors instructed the plant to slash the carcass and paint it with green dye before putting it on the regular 3 p.m. rendering truck, Ms. Mucklow said.

Felicia Nestor, director of food safety at the Government Accountability Project, which protects federal whistle-blowers, said she had heard of several recent instances in which inspectors had been told by regional offices not to bother testing cows with signs of brain damage. Ms. Nestor said the whistle-blowers did not want to come forward.

Staggering and collapse by a cow can be caused by head injuries, rabies, agricultural poisons or cancer, but mad cow disease can be detected only by cutting off the animal's head, taking a sample from the base of the brain and doing laboratory tests that are not now performed in slaughterhouses.

Ms. Nestor said she had been told that some tests were skipped because they were inconvenient. In a state like Texas, she said, the drive to the regional office with samples could be several hundred miles. But, she noted, other slaughterhouse inspectors have shipped frozen heads or brains to the U.S.D.A. testing laboratory in Ames, Iowa.

Mr. Loyd said he did not know the shipping procedures.

The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates rendering plants, said Tuesday that it had tracked the slaughterhouse's shipment and would require that it all be destroyed or made into pig feed. Swine are thought not to be susceptible to mad cow disease.

Lone Star Beef is the country's 18th-largest slaughterhouse and specializes in older dairy cattle, which are at highest risk of the disease.

According to Steve Mitchell, a United Press International medical reporter who has collected thousands of 2002 and 2003 slaughterhouse records under the Freedom of Information Act, Lone Star Beef slaughtered about 350,000 animals in those years and tested only three.

Mr. Loyd confirmed that but explained that the animals normally tested were those unable to walk, or "downers." Lone Star does not accept downers because it is a supplier to McDonald's, which forbids them.

"The other plant in town had 90 tests," he said. "They accepted downers."

[CattleAnnie]

U.S. federal officials OK Texas cow material for swine feed

WASHINGTON, May 04, 2004 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- The byproducts of a Texas cow that was destroyed after it showed potential signs of a central nervous disorder must be made into pig feed or be destroyed, the Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday.

The FDA said it tracked down all the material from the cow that was sent to a processor for rendering into animal feed and other products. All the material is being held by a business that the agency did not name. The government has said that none of it got into the human food supply.

The cow was destroyed before it could be tested for mad cow disease, an incurable illness that eats holes in the brain, attacking the central nervous system.

The disease is believed to spread by recycling meat and bones from infected animals back into cattle feed. It is thought to cause the fatal variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans who eat the infected beef. CJD kills its carrier by tearing holes in brain tissue.

The FDA planned to send a letter to the business saying it "will not object to use of this material in swine feed only" because pigs are not considered susceptible to mad cow disease, one in a family of illnesses known to infect grass-eating animals.

If the business agrees to only using the material in swine feed, FDA said it will then track the material through the supply chain from the processor to the farm to ensure that the feed is monitored and fed only to pigs.

The Agriculture Department learned of the cow Friday. It was taken to slaughter Wednesday at Lone Star Beef in San Angelo, Texas. Cattle with mad cow disease exhibit symptoms of a disorder in the central nervous system.

The FDA said inspectors checked the slaughterhouse, the rendering facility, the farm where the animal came from and the processor that initially received the cow from the slaughterhouse.

On Monday, Agriculture Department officials said a veterinarian condemned the animal after seeing it stagger and fall, indicating that it was either injured or sick with a neurological disorder such as rabies or mad cow disease.

Animals found with those symptoms are supposed to be kept until the department can collect samples for testing. The Agriculture Department has said it did not know why that had not happen in the Texas cow's case.

[CattleAnnie]

Feds reviewing Texas mad cow breach
By Steve Mitchell
United Press International
Published 5/5/2004 7:40 PM


WASHINGTON, May 5 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Inspector General launched a review Wednesday of the recent breach of federal mad cow testing policy in Texas, United Press International has learned.

A cow appeared at Lone Star Beef in San Angelo, Texas, last week that had signs of a central nervous system disorder. Although USDA policy dictates that all such animals be tested for mad cow disease because they are considered the most likely to be infected, agency inspectors did not follow the protocol in this instance and the animal's brain tissue was not examined.

"We're reviewing the process involved with the Lone Star Beef plant in San Angelo to determine what happened," David Gray, counsel to USDA's Office of the Inspector General, told UPI late Wednesday.

Meatingplace.com reported early Wednesday that unnamed government and industry sources, who claimed to have first-hand knowledge of the Texas incident, said a USDA employee in Austin, some 225 miles from Lone Star Beef, overruled the agency inspectors at the plant and made the decision not to test the cow.

Gray said the OIG had not yet determined whether there was any malfeasance by USDA employees. At this point, the probe is only a review, not an audit or an investigation, he added.

The review will seek to determine "why did it happen and then we'll determine where to go from there and take appropriate action," he said.

The USDA said previously it has launched its own investigation into why the mad cow testing procedure was breached in Texas, but the OIG's review will be independent from that, Gray said.

USDA officials could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.

Lone Star Beef issued a statement saying it had been "instructed by the USDA to dispose of the animal."

Although the carcass of the Texas cow was banned from the human food supply, it was transferred to a rendering facility. The Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday the rendered material from the cow had been placed on hold but would be permitted to go into pig feed. If the rendering firm elected not to use it for pig feed, the material would be destroyed.

Acting FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford told UPI the cow's brain and spinal cord -- the most infectious parts of an animal infected with mad cow disease -- were included in the rendered material.

Because there is no way to test the animal for mad cow at this point, Crawford said the agency must respond as if it were infected. The concern is humans can contract a fatal, incurable brain disorder called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from eating meat contaminated with the mad cow pathogen.

The FDA will closely monitor the rendered material and ensure the rendering facility that processed it is decontaminated, Crawford said.

The OIG is currently conducting two investigations related to the USDA's mad cow testing program. One is focused on allegations the USDA veterinarian involved in the case of the infected animal detected in Washington last December falsified documents to indicate the cow was a downer, or unable to stand, after it tested positive.

The other investigation is classified as an audit and is aimed at reviewing the USDA's mad cow surveillance program, both before and after the Washington case, which is the first and only confirmed incident of mad cow in U.S. herds. The OIG is examining whether the agency's policies have been implemented consistently or whether there are regional variations, among other topics.

Asked if the Lone Star Beef incident might be included in the overall audit, Gray said, "It's too early for me to say."

--

Steve Mitchell is UPI's Medical Correspondent. E-mail sciencemail@upi.com

[CattleAnnie]

USDA Infighting May Have Led to Cow Error




SAN ANGELO, Texas, May 07, 2004 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Infighting at the U.S. Department of Agriculture led to the mix-up at a slaughterhouse where a sick cow was processed for pork feed rather than tested for mad cow disease, an official at the slaughterhouse says.

"Maybe something like this is what it's going to take to get them to work together," said Burley Smith, vice president of Lone Star Beef, where the cow was slaughtered last week.

The cow passed an initial visual inspection by a veterinarian with the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service; he later saw the cow stumble and collapse. Such behavior is sometimes due to brain damage, a sign of mad cow disease, but other illnesses or injuries may have caused the collapse.

The vet condemned the animal as unfit for human consumption and recommended to a regional director with the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in Austin that samples from the cow's brain be tested, Smith said.

But the regional director told the vet not to test the cow, Smith said. Instead, it was taken a rendering plant where the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates rendering plants, approved it for use in swine feed. Swine are thought not to be susceptible to mad cow disease.

USDA spokesman Ed Loyd said it was a mistake not to test the animal and the matter was under investigation. He said "clearly there was some confusion" about the protocol. He denied infighting was the problem.

"The cooperation in this investigation has been excellent," Loyd said.

The USDA has not released the names of the vet or the regional director. Smith said he didn't know them.

The USDA said this week it contacted inspectors at all slaughterhouses and regional offices to reaffirm its policy that all possible brain-diseased cattle be tested.

"One failure of this policy is unacceptable to us," said Barbara Masters, acting administrator of the Food Safety and Inspection Service, which inspects incoming animals at meatpacking plants.

The department is conducting an internal investigation.

Last year USDA inspectors tested 20,000 animals in the United States; 500 of them exhibited signs of central nervous system disorder, Loyd said.

In December, a Holstein in Washington was the first in the United States to test positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, a brain-destroying illness.

---

[CattleAnnie]

US mad cow test procedure violated in Texas-USDA
03 May 2004 22:31:07 GMT

(edits)

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON, May 3 (Reuters) - Federal inspectors failed to perform a required mad cow disease test on a suspicious animal in Texas, the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Monday, just as the Bush administration is pushing to reopen world markets to U.S. beef.

The crippled animal slipped through the USDA's mad cow testing regime at a time when the government is trying to convince Japan and other nations that it has imposed enough safeguards to protect the food supply.

The cow at a Lone Star Beef plant in San Angelo, Texas, was condemned on April 27 after a federal veterinarian "observed the cow stagger and fall," according to a USDA statement. But instead of holding the cow for testing, the carcass was sent to rendering, without being tested for the brain-wasting disease.

Meat from the animal did not enter the human food chain, according to USDA.

"Standard procedures call for animals condemned due to possible CNS (central nervous system) disorder to be kept" until federal officials collect brain tissue for testing, the USDA said. "However, this did not occur in this case." The USDA said it was investigating the reason.

USDA officials and veterinarians have stressed that a cow could stagger and fall because of a broken bone or other illnesses, not just because of mad cow disease.

JAPAN WANTS ALL US COWS TESTED

The problem in Texas comes four months after the United States found its first case of mad cow disease in a Canadian-born cow slaughtered in Washington state.

That case abruptly halted nearly $4 billion worth of U.S. beef shipments. While Mexico, a huge buyer of American beef, has lifted some of its import restrictions, Japan, the largest foreign importer, has refused to ease its total trade ban.

Japan has insisted that it wants all U.S. cattle tested for the disease. But USDA and U.S. meat industry officials argue there is no scientific justification for testing all cattle.

Lone Star Beef said in a statement that it was "instructed by the USDA to dispose of the animal" and immediately sent the suspicious cow to rendering.

"At Lone Star Beef, food safety is our top priority at all times," the company said. "We are cooperating with federal officials as they review this situation."

Under stricter regulations adopted by the USDA since the first case of U.S. mad cow disease was found, no crippled or "downer" cattle can be processed into human food. The animals can still be rendered or processed at high temperatures to make bone meal, soap, cosmetics and other industrial products.

A spokeswoman for the American Meat Institute said the group was "glad the animal was kept out of the food supply," but she did not know why the necessary testing was not done.

Mad cow disease has been linked to a variant human disease responsible for at least 140 deaths, mostly in Europe.

A spokesman for the Denver-based U.S. Meat Export Federation, said the problem in Texas "adds a new wrinkle" to beef trade negotiations with Tokyo that are getting underway.

Last week, USDA officials said they hoped Japan, a $1.4 billion market for American beef, would relax its trade ban by the end of summer.

Foreign importers and retailers have demanded more details on the Texas incident, the federation spokesman said.

The cow in Texas fell through the USDA's safety net as the government expands efforts to find out if the Washington state cow was an exception or marked a bigger mad cow problem.

Last year, USDA tested only 20,000 cattle for mad cow disease, a level criticized by consumer groups as inadequate, out of about 36 million slaughtered. For an 18 month period starting in June, USDA aims to test at least 200,000 cattle.

"This is deeply troubling, that USDA is not testing the cattle showing signs of central nervous system disease. These are exactly the cattle that are at highest risk of actually having BSE," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety expert with the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

USDA investigators and a congressional committee are conducting separate probes into whether the Washington state cow was a downer, as USDA claimed on Dec. 23.

[CattleAnnie]

Records show 3 mad cow tests at Texas firm




WASHINGTON, May 04, 2004 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Only three mad cow tests were conducted at the Texas plant where federal testing policies were breached last week, according to records obtained by UPI.

That small number of tests occurred despite the fact the Lone Star Beef Co. of San Angelo, Texas, is the 18th largest U.S. slaughterhouse. The company processes older dairy cows that are considered to be at high risk of infection.

U.S. Department of Agriculture records for 2002 and 2003 show only three animals were tested at the plant.

The low testing rate at Lone Star is particularly relevant in light of the fact that on April 27 an animal at the plant with symptoms consistent with mad cow disease was not tested.

Ron DeHaven, administrator of the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, which oversees the agency's mad cow testing program, declined a request from UPI for comment on the lack of testing at Lone Star.

Lone Star officials also declined to comment.

[CattleAnnie]

2004-04-30 22:56:24 GMT (Reuters)

(Recasts, new throughout)

By Bob Burgdorfer and Richard Cowan

CHICAGO/WASHINGTON, April 30 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Agriculture did not test a head of cattle in Texas that displayed central nervous symptoms even though such symptoms could be associated with mad cow disease, USDA officials said on Friday.

The department is collecting information on the Texas animal, USDA spokeswoman Alisa Harrison said on Friday, emphasizing there is no evidence yet that the animal may have had mad cow disease.

U.S. cattle futures fell early on Friday on a trading floor rumor that an animal in south-central Texas was being tested for mad cow disease.

"We do know that the animal was condemned and it didn't go into the meat supply," Harrison said.

Harrison added that early indications were that there "were not any samples taken" from the animal. Asked whether any tissue samples, such as from the animal's brain, were still available for testing, Harrison said, "I do not know."

Another USDA spokesman said the animal was exhibiting "central nervous signs" and officials rejected it from the food supply. "Whenever there is an animal with central nervous signs it's condemned," he added.

The U.S. agriculture sector was rocked in December when the first American case of mad cow disease was discovered. The finding put a halt to virtually all U.S. beef exports, which were valued at $3.8 billion in 2003.

Harrison said federal inspectors in Texas were being interviewed about the condemned animal.

"We have to go back and figure out exactly what happened and what the real situation is or isn't," she said.

In response to the Dec. 23 finding of mad cow disease in Washington state, the USDA announced steps to increase testing for the illness, which is linked to a fatal human disease that has killed 140 people, mostly in Europe.

USDA is focusing the added testing on "downer animals," those that cannot walk when arriving at a slaughterhouse, and other animals exhibiting central nervous system problems. Downer animals could be suffering from an illness as dangerous as mad cow disease or a problem more benign such as an injured leg.


Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, questioned why USDA may have failed to test the condemned animal.

"If they're not testing the cattle most highly recommended for testing, it would appear USDA is not really looking to find the problem where it may exist," DeWaal said.

There are an estimated 200,000 downer cattle in the United States each year. USDA is working on a program that aims to test all of those animals for mad cow disease. But the program is not fully operational yet.

When the USDA reported the first and only case of mad cow disease in the U.S., cattle futures plummeted nearly 20 percent over several days. The free-fall ended after U.S. consumers showed no concern about the safety of American beef.

Even if the condemned Texas animal exhibited a central nervous system disorder, it could have been suffering from one of several illnesses besides mad cow disease, according to veterinarians.

[CattleAnnie]

FDA Links Condemned Texas Cow, Pre-Ban Type Feed
Thu May 6, 2004 05:06 PM ET


By Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday noted a possible link between a condemned cow in Texas and eight-year-old animal feed that was not protected against mad cow disease.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Monday acknowledged it erred in failing to test a cow for the brain-wasting disease when it arrived at a south-central Texas slaughterhouse possibly exhibiting a central nervous system disorder.

While beef from the 12-year-old cow never entered the human food supply, USDA's mistake came as the government has vowed to toughen surveillance and testing for mad cow disease. The extra surveillance is an important step toward restoring about $4 billion in beef exports that were wiped out by the discovery of mad cow disease in a Washington state animal four months ago.

Acting FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford was asked by reporters whether his agency had found any problems with feed currently on the San Angelo, Texas, farm where the condemned cow lived its entire life.

He responded that the farm has never been found in violation of animal feed rules, but added that the cow was so old that it would have consumed feed a long time ago that was not covered by newer regulations.

"The feed that was fed to this animal would have been probably eight years ago," said Acting FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford, an expert on veterinary medicine.

Prior to 1997, cattle feed was allowed to contain bits of slaughtered cattle. An outbreak of mad cow disease in Europe in the 1980s, which still plagues the European Union, led to U.S. prohibitions in 1997 on feeding cattle parts to live cattle.

Experts agree the ruminant feed ban is the most important defense against mad cow disease.

"The cow was 12 years old. The feed ban has only been in place for seven years," Crawford said after speaking to a consumer safety group.

USDA officials on Wednesday said they hope to wrap up an internal investigation by the end of the week into why the condemned cow's carcass was rendered without being testing for mad cow disease.

Mad cow disease has been linked to a human variant blamed for 140 deaths in Europe. Continued ...

© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.

[CattleAnnie]

Cow destroyed before testing for disease




SAN ANGELO, Texas, May 03, 2004 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- A cow that was ordered destroyed at a West Texas meatpacking plant was sent to rendering before the U.S. Department of Agriculture could collect samples to test it for a possible central nervous system disorder, USDA officials said Monday.

The rendered product from the animal did not enter the human food chain and presents no risk to human health, said a joint statement by Ron Dehaven, administrator for animal and plant health inspection, and Barbara Masters, acting administrator for food safety and inspection.

The cow was taken to slaughter Wednesday at Lone Star Beef in San Angelo. The statement said a veterinarian condemned the animal after seeing the cow stagger and fall, indicting either an injury or a potential central nervous system disorder, one of the signs of mad cow disease.

"Standard procedures call for animals condemned due to a possible (central nervous system) disorder to be kept until (USDA) officials can collect samples for testing," the statement said. "However, this did not occur in this case and the animal was sent to rendering."

"We don't know why" the animal was rendered before samples were taken, said Susan Holl, spokeswoman with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, an agency of the USDA. "We're looking into that."

"It looks as if there was some misunderstanding," said Andrea McNally, a USDA spokeswoman.

USDA officials are investigating the circumstances and "will take appropriate actions once all information is available," Dehaven and Masters said.

Downed animals still can be processed at rendering plants which prepare animal byproducts for use in consumer goods, from cosmetics to gelatin for drug capsules. The government believes such items pose no risk to human health.

Last year, inspectors tested 20,000 animals in the United States and 500 of them exhibited signs of central nervous system disorder, USDA spokesman Ed Loyd said. None tested positive for mad cow disease.

The only case of mad cow detected in the United States was in Washington state in December.

On June 1, USDA inspectors will increase the number of cattle tested for mad cow disease to help reassure Americans that their meat supply is safe and win back vital exports markets, the agency said.

[CattleAnnie]

This is the last one I will post today. It is several years old, but is very interesting reading considering the current situation there.

Mad cow infections spur action
UPI US Sun, Jun 15, 1997
HOUSTON, June 15 (UPI) -- A report says Texas health officials have begun an investigation into an unexplained rise in "mad cow disease" cases in northeast Texas. The Houston Chronicle reports today that health officials are concerned because five people have been diagnosed with the disease since April 1996. One or two cases in the period is the norm.
Julie Rawlings of the Texas Department of Health tells the Chronicle the cases could be a statistical blip, or the high point of a bell curve. She says, "There's not enough data yet to determine whether it's a trend."

The disease, formally called Creutzfeldt-Jakob, has been detected in a 22-county area in northeast Texas. The state has 254 counties. Statistics show the disease fells on average about one person per million in the United States, but the rate of infection can vary from year to year. It is usually fatal. State health department official Dr. Kate Hendricks, who is director for infectious disease, tells the Chronicle that from 1984 through 1994 there were 111 people in Texas who had the disease listed on their death records, or a rate of .76 cases per million population per year.

Texas authorities are trying to determine if a rare, fatal brain disorder linked to "mad cow" disease is claiming an unusually high number of victims in the state's northeast.

The state investigation comes weeks after U.S. authorities unveiled new rules to ward off potential outbreaks of "mad cow" by banning most animal-derived protein in cow, sheep and goat feeds. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the ban aims to protect animals from neurological diseases such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and minimize risk to humans.

BSE, the scientific name for mad cow, has been tied to Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, which killed 16 people in Britain who ate possibly contaminated beef in the late 1980s or early 1990s. The deaths sparked worldwide concern about beef consumption and led to a European Union ban on British beef imports.

Rawlings said the Texans with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease do not appear to have died from the same form of the disease as the British victims.

But Melvin Massey, a veterinarian whose wife, Judith, died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease on June 1, says he remains "suspicious."

Houston-June 16-FWN--Cases of CJD in humans in Texas should not be linked to bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cattle, according to Alisa Harrison with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA).

The Houston Chronicle reported Sunday that health officials are concerned because five people have been diagnosed with CJD since April 1996. One or two cases in the period is the norm, according to officials.

"There is a man who maintains his wife died of CJD," Harrison told FWN, "but that has not been confirmed. The coroner hasn't determined whether she died of CJD." The man in question maintains his wife ate imported brisket and that's how she contracted the disease, Harrison noted.
"There continues to be no link between CJD and BSE," Harrison stressed. "And even if we're talking about the new variant, a person would have had to have eaten beef brain or spinal cord from an animal with BSE. We have not imported any such product or meat since 1986, so it's highly unlikely that this case has any link with BSE. The other cases are the regular form of CJD, not the variant," Harrison noted.

In the Houston Chronicle article, Julie Rawlings of the Texas Department of Health said it's not clear if the cases could be a statistical blip, or the high point of a bell curve. "There's not enough data yet to determine whether it's a trend," she said. CJD has been noted in a 22-county area in northeast Texas. The state has 254 counties. Statistics show CJD kills on average about one person per million in the United States, but the rate of infection can vary from year to year. It is usually fatal.
Texas State health director for infectious disease Dr. Kate Hendricks told the Chronicle that from 1984 through 1994, there were 111 people in Texas who had the disease listed on their death records, or a rate of 0.76 cases per million population per year.

[rsomer]

Personally, I am watching Mexico’s reaction to what will become known as the Texas Holstein. Mexico moved towards more normal trade in beef with the U.S. as recently as April 4, 2004 after the discovery of the Washington Holstein last December. In the past, Mexico has moved swiftly to close their border to U.S. beef when they suspected a health or food safety concern. To date, there seems to be no reaction from Mexico on this issue.

[CattleAnnie]

Here's another oldie but goodie.

Not one cow offered to BSE test Program

July, 4, 1997
Capital Press, Salem,OR Tam Moore

There were lots of phone calls, but no offers of cattle to test two weeks after California scientists pleaded for research animals from U.S. veterinarians and cattle producers.
Lily Yang, head of Neuromark Corp., said a June 12 teleconference and widespread publicity in cattle trade publications generated interest in the procedure that may lead to detecting bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE. The cattle brain disease in 1996 forced British beef off the European market.

But a full two weeks after Yang and scientists from California Institute of Technology and Univeristy of California-Davis pleaded for live cattle material for testing, not one sample has been volunteered.

Yang's company is handling the development of the test, which uses molecules in spinal fluid that indicate BSE is present in the brain of cattle. Michael Harrington, a neurologist at Cal Tech, came up with the technique as a way to diagnose a human form of the ailment, called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or CJD. Robert Higgins, a veterinary neurologist at UC-Davis, adapted the technique to cattle.

Yang says the scientists obtained tissue samples from England to run their first test. The result, she says, was a 98 percent correlation between results of the marker test and post-death examination of the animals when traditional viewing of brain sections confirmed BSE.

There's pressure from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to get a reliable live animal BSE test, Yang said. She speculated that the reluctance of veterinarians and producers to volunteer material for testing might come from a fear that the research could actually turn up a BSE case. The disease has never been confirmed in U.S. cattle.

Getting the test perfected is a safeguard, said Yang, pointing to the fact that similar brain disease has been found in U.S. elk and deer, among other animals.

A live animal test would let veterinarians isolate suspected carriers of BSE, providing traditional mamagement opportunities used in other animal disease situations. The current U.S. Bse surveillance program uses a spot-check of brain tissue taken from animals after commercial slaughter.

Scientists, including those from USDA's Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, speculate that the condition turns up spontaneously in some animals. Last week APHIS confirmed that it has a national contingency plan for public information and surveillance if a BSE case should be found.

Information an the BSE diagnostic test and specifics if tissue and spinal fluid samples sought by Neuromark can be obtained by contacting Lily Yang at voice: (415) 917-0401; fax: (415) 917-1434
To get on the Neuromark information distribution list, call (800) 600-711(sic) extension 234.

[ALICIA]

The only thing that this tells me Is there is not much hope for the border to be open any time in the next 6 years or so.
Their is just to much cloke and dagger going on. They (US) can't even keep a eye on their own cattle with out our live cattle coming across the boarder.
I think our efforts would be beter spent on making a market in our own country, and some farm are just going to have to go under or be 100% part-time farmer and not like the 80% where is now.
Plus, the water situation is not what it should be this spring, and nutrigion managment etc. the restictions are just getting out of hand. Ask any city person and they will tell you, we don't need farming in Canada.
I'm from the East and I knew its not fair but the big Eastern citys do run the show and have the deciding vote, and they are born and raised in the city and they treat country people in goverment like durt under there feet and told to keep quit. The farmers in goverment are out numbered and voted by city people in goverment, so they have to fight a up hill battle with people that just don't what to hear it. The only thing city people under stand is if it doesn't make money than don't do it, and how much income tax has farming generated to the goverment to so call run the country. From me nothing, but I did clam big expences and they had to pay me. As you know the goverment is slow at handing out money, but you better pay them on time.
I'm not down, I'm a Hereford Breeder. I just went on like normal and sold the culls and the once I didn't wait. I didn't get much, but the ones that are left are better. The seed stock producer keeps on trying for that perfect cow or bull, and I never really liked selling them for meat any way, but it was a place for the culls to go, I know you can't feed them all because if I could I would and have tryed, I'm buying hay now. Will there be a return, Not in my life time.