May 24, 2004

USDA Plans Briefing Friday On Expanded BSE Testing
 
The U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to hold a technical briefing Friday to update the public on its progress as it prepares to implement an expanded bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad-cow disease, testing program on June 1, USDA officials said Thursday.
 
"We're in a process of finalizing all the protocols that are going to be necessary, but by June 1 we'll have the processes in place to begin our enhanced surveillance," said a USDA official on condition of anonymity.
 
The USDA announced in March that it would greatly increase the amount of cattle it tests for BSE for a one-time 18-month period to get a "snapshot" of BSE prevalence in the U.S. Peter Fernandez, an associate administrator for USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said on May 7 the department now believes it will be able to test 268,000 animals for BSE.
 
USDA will have the infrastructure, including newly certified laboratories to perform BSE tests throughout the country, ready by June 1, although the department may decide more needs to be done as the program progresses, one USDA official said.
 
"We may add a few laboratories after June 1, if we need to, but we'll have what we need," the official said.
 
The enhanced surveillance testing effort is part of USDA's response to the BSE case it discovered in Washington state in December.
 
USDA, in a recent press release said: "Sampling some 268,000 animals would allow for the detection of BSE at a rate of one positive in 10 million adult cattle with a 99 percent confidence level. In other words, the enhanced program could detect BSE even if there were only five positive animals in the entire country."
 
USDA Secretary Ann Veneman said in a March 15 teleconference that the department will spend $70 million to conduct the increased BSE surveillance program. During that same teleconference, Ron DeHaven, who since has been promoted to head of Aphis, said the increased testing will likely lead to BSE-positive findings. But he cautioned there will be the potential for false-positives during the increased testing.
 

Source: USDA