April 19, 2004

USDA Offers To Test Cattle Older Than 30 Months For Mad Cow

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is offering U.S. producers to test cattle that are over 30 months of age for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad-cow disease, to help companies market their beef, USDA Undersecretary Bill Hawks said Friday.
 
Hawks, head of USDA's marketing and regulatory programs, said the program was offered as a compromise to companies such as Creekstone Farms Premium Beef LLC, which wanted USDA approval to test all cattle for BSE in order to sell beef to Japan.
 
USDA refused Creekstone's request and, according to Hawks, the company rejected USDA's compromise offer.
 
Hawks said the program likely would have provided testing of only a small percentage of the cattle slaughtered by Creekstone, but he stressed that any U.S. company is welcome to sign up. So far, USDA has had no takers, he said.
 
Japan enacted a ban on all U.S. beef after the U.S. announced it discovered a case of BSE on Dec. 23. Since then, Japan has refused to consider lifting the ban until the U.S. agrees to test 100% of the cattle used to produce beef for export to Japan. The USDA has been adamant in its refusal to agree to that.
 
USDA Undersecretary for Farm and Foreign Agriculture Services J.B. Penn said: "This disease ... does not manifest itself in animals under 30 months of age ... There is absolutely no reason to test animals under 30 months of age. You can test and test and test and you're not going to find it. And it's expensive, but it also has an implied consumer safety aspect to it that we think is not warranted."