October 5, 2005

USDA to test healthy cattle for mad cow disease
 

The USDA will begin testing 20,000 healthy cattle in its enhanced surveillance programme for mad cow disease, it announced on Oct 4.

The testing will take place over the next few weeks though the start date for the testing, for which owners volunteer their cattle for examination, has not be set yet. The USDA has also not determined if producers would be compensated for participating in the programme.

The USDA has been under pressure from the US congress to start testing healthy cattle. The 20,000 healthy animals will be chosen from 40 US slaughter plants that handle 86 percent of the aged cattle processed for human consumption each year in the US.

The agency said it does not expect to find mad cow disease in the animals and revealed that it would test the animal by taking a brain sample at the slaughter plant.

The carcasses will not be allowed to enter the food chain until test results show the samples as negative for BSE, the agency assured.

Since Jun 1 last year, the US had sampled nearly 500,000 cattle brains in animals seen as at the highest risk and eventually found one additional case in a 12-year-old Texas beef cow.

There are about 105 million head of cattle in the US as of Jul 1.