(Note:  Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling -- COOL -- is nothing more than common sense, and nothing less than imperative.)

 

 

June 25, 2005

 

 

 

By Purva Patel purva.patel@chron.com

 

The Houston Chronicle

 

Houston, Texas

 

http://www.chron.com

 

To submit a Letter to the Editor: viewpoints@chron.com

 

 

The U.S. government confirmed a second case of mad cow disease in the U.S. on Friday, triggering changes in testing and potentially doing short-term damage to the nation's $37.8 billion cattle industry.

Meat from the cow never made it into human food or animal feed supplies, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said.

"Because of our safeguards in place, the animal did not get anywhere near the human food chain," said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. "What we are pursuing is a better understanding of what we were dealing with. There's always an opportunity to improve protocol and improve science."

Humans who eat infected beef can develop a variant of the brain-wasting mad cow disease known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., a longtime critic of the USDA's handling of the mad cow problem, called for a congressional investigation into how the case nearly escaped detection by the agriculture department.

"The administration's response to mad cow disease appears to be more public relations than public health," he said. "The Agriculture Department now says it's taking aggressive steps, but just a few weeks ago the department was talking about easing the ban on downer cattle in the food supply and sharply reducing mad cow surveillance."

Johanns said he has directed USDA scientists to develop new protocols on handling inconclusive screening tests for the disease, how suspicious carcasses are stored during testing, and the completion of formal paperwork reporting test results.

The government is still investigating where the cow with the disease originated, though there is no sign of it being imported, he said.

In December 2003, the nation's first case of mad cow disease was discovered in Washington state.

That animal, it turned out, was imported from Canada.

The recent case -- reportedly discovered in Texas -- was found in November 2004. As a "downer" that couldn't walk, it was considered high risk.

Initial tests came back inconclusive, but two more tests using a more sophisticated method indicated the cow was free of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.

The USDA's inspector general requested further testing earlier this month.

That test, widely used in Europe and known as the "Western blot," came back positive.

Samples were then sent to a lab in Weybridge, England, which confirmed the results.

Texas cattlemen insisted the state's beef supply is safe, despite Friday's announcement.

"We can at least move forward. For the most part the firewalls have worked," said Shane Sklar, executive director of the Independent Cattlemen's Association of Texas. "We would have liked better protocols at the USDA earlier. We hope everybody's learned a lesson here for clarity and transparency's sake."

In Texas, cattle is a $5.6 billion industry.

Disclosure of the case and new safeguards will likely impact cattle markets next week, said Richard Wortham, executive vice president of the Texas Beef Council.

On Friday, cattle prices closed up 7 cents a pound. Trading ended before the announcement.

"The cattle market is just like the stock market -- it doesn't like uncertainty. These types of issues certainly create volatility in our market. Most likely, you will see something happen on Monday. To what degree, I wouldn't know," he said.

Analysts don't expect long-term fallout for cattle markets or U.S. demand.

"I think the cattle futures market will probably open lower on Monday, possibly 100 points or more, but more because of general confusion than real nervousness about consumer demand," said John Harrington, a livestock analyst with market research firm DTN.

"We've had mad cow scares since 2003 starting in Canada and really have not seen a real negative reaction to this disease by U.S. consumers because they see it as a very rare situation," Harrington said.

But the ramifications could be more serious for U.S. beef producers who have been struggling to reopen foreign markets closed to them after the first mad cow scare.

The government has been working to restore beef trade with key export markets like Japan and South Korea.

"This probably doesn't help that effort," Harrington said. "Not that it was on the fast track, but it may put it on an even slower track, especially with the agriculture secretary calling for new protocols. All that takes time. It postpones the rehabilitation of the export trade."

Bill Bullard, chief executive of R-Calf USA, a cattle group that has been critical of the department's mad cow testing program, renewed calls for more testing and stricter safeguards against mad cow.

"This signals the need to strengthen our BSE resistance and the fact that we shouldn't lower any of the standards that continue to protect against the introduction of the disease from other countries," Bullard said.

"Additional tests will enable us and markets we export to to have a higher level of confidence that we can know scientifically if this case is the only one."

 

Copyright 2005, Houston Chronicle.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3240423

 

Additional, related AP article:

 

Tests confirm second Mad Cow case in U.S.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/24/AR2005062401315. html