Feds: Mad Cow Never Entered Food Chain

WASHINGTON (AP) - An initial test of one animal has failed to rule out mad cow disease, but people who eat U.S. beef should not be alarmed because the animal never entered the food chain, agriculture officials say.

The Agriculture Department said the result was "inconclusive" for the brain-wasting disease. The carcass was being sent to the USDA National Veterinary Laboratory in Ames, Iowa; results were expected in four days to seven days.

"No matter how the confirmatory testing comes back, USDA remains confident in the safety of the U.S. beef supply," John Clifford, deputy administrator of USDA veterinary services, said in announcing the finding late Friday. "This animal did not enter the human food chain or feed chain."

Clifford declined to identify the animal or its location until testing is complete. It is "very likely" final testing could turn up negative, he said.

Norman Schwartz, president of Bio-Rad Laboratories in Hercules, Calif., said the initial test was performed at one of his labs. "They are designed to catch everything. You are catching every possible suspicious sample," Schwartz said Saturday.

In the first case of mad cow discovered in the United States, a Holstein on a Washington state farm was found to have the disease in December, leading more than 50 countries to ban imports of U.S. beef. Japan and South Korea, two of the biggest export markets, have their bans in effect.

The department this month expanded national testing for the disease in response to that mad cow scare. More than 7,000 cattle have been tested under the program, which seeks to check about 220,000 animals over the next year to 18 months.

Agriculture officials and representatives of the U.S. beef cattle industry quickly sought to play down a potential threat to consumers.

"This is not at all unexpected," Clifford said. "Inconclusive results are a normal component of most screening tests, which are designed to be extremely sensitive so they will detect any sample that could possibly be positive."

At the American Meat Institute, a trade group, spokeswoman Janet Riley said: "Regardless of the test outcome, beef is safe because the infectious agent is not contained in beef and the tissues that can contain the infectious agent are removed, and do not enter the food supply. Consumers can continue to enjoy beef in safety."

Bill Bullard, chief executive officer of R-CALF USA, a cattlemen's group, urged calm in the live cattle markets, which dropped 20 percent after U.S. officials reported the first mad cow case in December.

Mad cow disease, known also as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, eats holes in the brains of cattle. It sprang up in Britain in 1986 and spread through countries in Europe and Asia, prompting massive destruction of herds and devastating the European beef industry.

A form of mad cow disease can be contracted by humans if they eat infected beef or nerve tissue, and possibly through blood transfusions. Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of mad cow disease, so far has killed 100 people in Britain and elsewhere, including a Florida woman this week who was believed to have contracted the disease in England.

The government last year conducted mad cow tests on tissues from 20,543 animals, virtually all of them cattle that could not stand or walk and had to be dragged to slaughter. After the December case, the government initially doubled the number of animals to be tested this year to 40,000.

With many foreign governments still reluctant to ease bans on U.S. beef, the testing program was expanded at a cost of $70 million to include as many as 220,000 slaughtered animals, following recommendations from an international scientific review panel. About 35 million cattle are slaughtered each year in the United States.

From the horses' mouths:

At 5:30 pm EDT, USDA was notified of an inconclusive test result (rapid, screening test) from the enhanced BSE surveillance program. At this time, they are not releasing any information regarding the location of the test or information about the animal. Tissues samples are being sent to USDA's National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa for further testing (immunohistochemistry test – the “gold standard” for BSE). Results from those tests are expected in 4 to 7 days.

Here are the highlights of this event thus far:

· A sample was inconclusive and is undergoing further tests at APHIS’ national reference laboratory in Ames, Iowa, which will take between 4-7 days.

· Inconclusive results do not indicate a positive sample. Instead, they indicate that the rapid screening test was reactive and must be sent for further testing to determine what caused the reaction.

· Inconclusive test results are not unexpected and are a normal component of most screening tests, which are designed to be extremely sensitive so as to detect any sample that could possibly be positive.

· The carcass of the animal has not entered the human food supply.

· Specific information about the animal and the location is not being released. APHIS has begun internal steps to identify the animal to be prepared if further testing were to return a positive result.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me. The department will be closely monitoring this situation and provide new information as it becomes available.

John J. Schiltz, DVM State Veterinarian (515) 281-5305

BY DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR DR. JOHN CLIFFORD FOR THE ANIMAL PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE

JUNE 25, 2004

At approximately 5:30 this evening, we were notified that an inconclusive BSE test result was received on a rapid screening test used as part of our enhanced BSE surveillance program.

The inconclusive result does not mean we have found another case of BSE in this country. Inconclusive results are a normal component of most screening tests, which are designed to be extremely sensitive so they will detect any sample that could possibly be positive.

Tissue samples are now being sent to USDA's National Veterinary Services Laboratories-the national BSE reference lab-which will run confirmatory testing.

This animal did not enter the human food chain nor the feed chain.

I know that there will be great interest in the specifics surrounding this inconclusive test result, such as what type of animal was tested, where the animal was from, and which lab did the testing. Because this test is only an inconclusive test result, and because of the chance the confirmatory results will be negative, we are not going to disclose that information at this time.

APHIS has begun internal steps to identify the animal to be prepared if further testing were to return a positive result.

Confirmatory results are expected back from NVSL within the next 4 to 7 days, and we will announce the test results then. And, if the test comes back positive for BSE, we will of course provide additional information about the animal and its origin.

In the meantime, there are two particular points I would like to make:

First: no matter how the confirmatory testing comes back, USDA remains confident in the safety of the U.S. beef supply. Again, this animal did not enter the human food chain or feed chain. Our ban on specified risk materials from the human food chain, provides the protection to public health, should another case of BSE ever be detected in the United States. By banning SRM-or skull, brain, trigeminal ganglia, eyes, portions of the vertebral column, spinal cord and dorsal root ganglia from cattle aged 30 months or older, and tonsils and the small intestine of cattle of all ages-USDA ensures all SRMs, or those materials most likely to contain the BSE agent, are removed from a suspect animal.

Second, this is not at all unexpected. Screening tests are often used in both human and animal health. They are designed to cast a very wide net in order to catch any possible patient that may have the condition, many of which will end up negative during further testing - glucose testing for diabetes is a good example. This is the type of screening test we are using for BSE surveillance testing.

And some subset of these animals may even turn out to be positive for BSE. While none of us wants to see that happen, that is not unexpected either. Our surveillance program is designed to test as many animals as we can in the populations that are considered to be at high risk for BSE. If we test 268,000 animals in the next 12 to 18 months, which we are fairly well on track to do-we will be able to find the disease if it occurs in as few as 1 in 10 million adult cattle with a 99 percent confidence level. In other words, our program could detect BSE even if there were only five positive animals in the target population in the entire country.

Additional measures to strengthen public health safeguards include the longstanding ban on imports of live cattle, other ruminants, and most ruminant products from high-risk countries; FDA's 1997 prohibition on the use of most mammalian protein in cattle feed; an aggressive surveillance program that has been in place for more than a decade; the banning of non-ambulatory cattle from the human food chain; the process control requirement for establishments using advanced meat recovery (AMR) systems; prohibiting the air-injection stunning of cattle; and, if an animal presented for slaughter is sampled for BSE, holding the carcass until the test results have been confirmed negative.

In 2001 and again in 2003, Harvard University conducted an independent assessment that affirmed USDA's BSE control and prevention measures. This assessment further affirmed that even with one or more detections of BSE in this country, U.S. control efforts will minimize any possible spread of the disease and ultimately eliminate if from the U.S. cattle population.

"Mad Cow Never Entered Food Chain"

Hmm, isn't that just what they said six months ago, the last time one slipped through the leaky sieve?

It is stupid not to test every cow. Stupid. And it misses a lot of data.
But who cares?
Nobody.

Japan cares. They refuse to buy our beef. And, they test every one of their own cattle.

I watched some reports the last time this happened, and felt sick to my stomach. Basically, as I understand it, we only test visibly obvious candidates, i.e., "downer cows" -- and then, the results aren't known until after the animal has entered the meatstream, and been mixed with the meat from countless other animals, making "recalls" an exercise in futility.

I remember the progression the last time this happened. It went something like "No worry, it didn't enter the food supply, we tested it and caught it before anything could happen", to, "well, only a little may have entered the supply chain, but it was all recalled", to, "it was sent to stores in ten states, but it was all recalled", to "it was mixed with the meat from numerous other cows, and is now in 10,000 packages across the country, and there is no way to recall it, but, it's probably OK, because it was diluted so much, and, they really do try to avoid allowing spinal cord or brain get into the mechanically separated meat."

I'm not exagerating on any of that stuff, that's exactly how I remember it going down six months ago.

But wait, it gets better.

In this other thread (that takes the matter more seriously than this one seems to take it) -- USDA Says Animal May Have Tested Positive for Mad Cow -- I posted the following in reply # 6:

Call me cynical, but I can't help but wonder about the timing of these TWO reports in ONE day.
Here's the first report, while the markets were still open:
Mad cow-like diseases linked by bacteria
That's a "good news" style article, that asserts that Mad Cow is caused by a bacteria, rather than a prion. (Bacteria, of course, can be killed by antibiotic, whereas prions are essentially indestructable.)
The article suggests that the prions are a mere symptom of a bacterial infection.
In a nutshell, that article is as far as I'm aware pretty much the only "good news" vis-a-vis the Mad Cow stuff.
And it comes out today? Early today?
Before the bad news comes out late today, to be dropped into the never-never-land of the "Friday Evening News Cycle"?
What are the odds?
Yeah, I'm feeling pretty cynical.
But I imagine I'm not feeling nearly as cynical as someone who might have sunk some major tonnage of $$$ into cattle futures early today on the basis of the first article, and then get blindsided after the markets closed when the second report hit the wires.
I think I'm gonna lay off beef for a while. I wish we'd ordered more meat chickens last month.

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