Good News on Mad Cow is rare, but this one’s well done Posted by michaelhansen at 08/01/06 02:47 PM

On the mad cow front, it looks like the Department of Agriculture (USDA) had an unusual attack of common sense yesterday. This is not typical for USDA. Earlier in the week, USDA had announced that they were going to reduce testing for mad cow disease (also called BSE) by 90% (a "don't look, don't find" approach). Then USDA announced, based on a made-to-order computer model, that present USDA and FDA actions were sufficient to ensure that there was little risk to cattle and humans from BSE, even if 500 BSE cattle were introduced into the US, and so no more stringent actions need to be taken (a "don't worry, be happy" approach).

In this same vein, earlier this month, USDA had sent a proposal to the White House for review, the final step before making it available for public comment, that would have allowed the import of Canadian cattle and beef over 30 months of age. At present only cattle and beef products from animals less than 30 months of age are permitted. Opening the border to older cattle from Canada is a bad idea, as older cows develop BSE more often than younger ones and Canada's mad cow problem appears to be worse than in the US. While the US has had 3 cases of mad cow disease, Canada has had 8 cases. In addition, 4 of Canada's BSE cases have occurred in the last 6 months. The most recent Canadian mad cow case, confirmed on July 13, 2006 was a 50 month old cow, borne almost 5 years after Canada instituted feed restrictions that it said would prevent BSE's spread, strongly suggesting that the Canadian feed rule isn't working. Indeed, 4 of Canada's BSE cases were born after the feed rule was implemented.

Yesterday, however, USDA withdrew its proposal to allow import of Canadian cattle over 30 months old. Finally, a bit of sanity from USDA. Now if they would just: close the border to Canadian cattle of all ages; expand the BSE surveillance program to test all animals sent to slaughter over 20 months of age; require mandatory animal identification; and publicize the names and contact information for stores, restaurants and institutions (hospitals, schools, nursing homes, etc.) in meat recalls, we could start to believe that the USDA was taking the threat of mad cow seriously.

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