WASHINGTON: U.S. consumer groups have urged the government not to scale down the testing program for mad cow disease, warning such a move could send a wrong message to the citizens of the country and beef importers.
The agriculture department, which is weighing on a decision on the enhanced surveillance program it had adopted in 2003 in the wake of the first mad cow disease, is now in the process of collecting inputs from scientists, industry officials and medical fraternity. A department spokesperson had even talked about "the conclusion" of the program.
Consumer groups are worried about the impact of the curtailment of the program, especially when a third instance of cow disease came to be reported from Alabama Monday.
The Consumer Federation of America said it seems to be unwise to "say you're going to ratchet it...down right after you've had another positive".
The first case of the disease was identified in Washington state in 2003. The agriculture department had then launched an enhanced cattle testing program to look at animals seen at the highest risk for the disease. During the last 18 or so months, some 650,000 animals have been tested under the program and had two of the three cases were detected. The country is estimated to have some 95 million cattle.
While agriculture secretary Mike Johanns had said in January last that he would decide on the future of the program soon, the department gave the first hint of a scaling down, with chief veterinarian John Clifford mentioning "the conclusion" of the program, while announcing the detection of a new case in Alabama.
Johanns pointed out that testing is not a food safety measure. It is a way to find out the prevalence of the disease. "Keep in mind the testing was for surveillance. It was to get an idea of the condition of the herd," he had told correspondents in Warsaw, Poland.
Jane Halloran, a policy director for Consumer Union said such a step will have disastrous consequences. "The alternative is to put your head in the sand and ignore the problems," she said. The organization, which has asked the government to test all cattle over the age of 20 months at slaughter, said the 2007 fiscal budget provides enough funds to conduct only 40,000 tests, or about 0.1 per cent of the 35 million cattle slaughtered in the country in a year.
Iowa's democrat senator Tom Harkin said the confidence of American consumers and foreign customers is at risk. He said the agriculture department should continue a sound surveillance testing program to demonstrate that U.S. beef is indeed safe and that anti-BSE safeguards are, in fact, working.
Meanwhile, the Alabama instance has not deterred importers. Two Asian markets feel this is not a cause for worry. South Korea is scheduled to resume beef purchases from the U.S. and Japan and the U.S. are now holding discussions on refining inspections.
The disease known in scientific terms as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, can affect humans when they eat the meat of a diseased animal. The infection is called Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which is a rare and deadly nerve disease.
The disease had killed some 180,000 cows in the U.K. when there was an outbreak in 1986 and spread throughout Europe peaking in 1993. It is also termed as cause for deaths of some 150 humans. In the U.S. the first case was spotted in 2003, in Washington state in a Canadian-born cow. It was found again last June in a Texas cow.
