June 9, 2004

R-CALF Asks USDA To Test More Canada-born Cattle For BSE
 

Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA) CEO Bill Bullard is calling on USDA today to urge them to strengthen plans for testing additional cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The group is calling for USDA to take into account the negative effects of releasing potentially misleading information - false positives - from the surveillance program, the need to identify animal origin consistent with international standards. The group is also asking USDA to target its testing program to Canadian cattle.

Bullard will speak with USDA officials today to share his concerns on behalf of his organization which represents about 10,000 cattle producers in 46 states.
 

R-CALF says Representatives of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange are reportedly holding a separate meeting with USDA officials today to raise concerns about the release of inconclusive test results and the possibility that USDA's plan may lead to uncertainty and volatility in the markets. While strongly supporting BSE testing in the US, R-CALF says it shares these concerns.
 

"USDA should not publicly release information on inconclusive tests because it may lead to unnecessary concerns on the part of the public and the commodities markets," Bullard said. "The agency should wait until it knows the test results are conclusive before releasing them to the public. The current testing plan may very well generate results that are false positives leading to unfounded concerns."
 

In addition to concerns about releasing inconclusive results, R-CALF USA took issue with USDA's unwillingness to identify the country of origin of tested cattle.

"USDA should gather and release the country of origin of each tested cow so we can pinpoint the source and contain the disease," Bullard said in a release today.

The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) categorizes cases of BSE based on the country of origin of the animal because that produces the best scientific correlation to where the disease appeared and where BSE prevention problems may lie. USDA's failure to gather and release country of origin information may unnecessarily put at risk the United States' status under international standards as provisionally BSE-free, R-CALF says.
 

R-CALF USA also expressed concern that the USDA plan was not targeted toward the cattle most likely to carry BSE.

"USDA also should target its tests to the highest risk animals - those from Canada - so that we are testing cattle most likely to have BSE," Bullard said. R-CALF notes there are approximately 450,000 Canadian cattle in the US. The January cattle inventory showed there were 94.9 million head of cattle in the US.  

Two Canadian cattle in the past year have tested positive for BSE, while no US cattle have tested positive, R-CALF points out. They say those 450,000 Canadian cattle are a higher risk population within the US, and should be identified and tested as part of any USDA testing program.