July 5, 2004

U.S. Starts Probe Of Canadian Beef Imports
 

An U.S. Inspector General said she will review the Department of Agriculture's authorization of Canadian beef imports last year, in violation of bans imposed following a case of mad cow disease in Alberta.

"We will review the USDA's actions pertaining to the import of Canadian beef products, including its use of risk mitigation measures,'' Agriculture Department Inspector General Phyllis Fong said in a letter to Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, the South Dakota Democrat who requested the probe.

U.S. rules in August limited Canadian beef imports to boneless cuts from animals under 30 months, after the government eased the total ban imposed after a mad cow case in Alberta was disclosed in May. The Agriculture Department in September allowed 7.3 million pounds of processed beef products to be imported, including deli cuts, pepperoni and ground beef, without disclosing it to the public and Congress.

"It is simply unfair that certain meatpackers and the Canadians had private knowledge about special permits granted under reduced food-safety standards while the American public was kept in the dark,'' Daschle said in a statement.

The processed beef items posed no risk to human health and would have been permitted under the rules because they were derived from boneless cuts of beef from animals under 30 months, Ron DeHaven, administrator of the department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said in May.

The U.S. had its own case of mad cow disease in December and has since stepped up screening tests to help identify potential cases of the brain-wasting disease, known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. Eating infected beef has been linked to a human form of the disease, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Fong, the department's inspector general, is also investigating whether government records were altered after the U.S. case of mad cow disease was found in Washington state more than six months ago.