AR-News: [US] Doubling Tests for Mad Cow Doesn't Quiet Program Critics

[Andrew Gach]

February 9, 2004
Doubling Tests for Mad Cow Doesn't Quiet Program Critics
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
     
The United States slaughters about 36 million cattle a year. It plans to test only 40,000 for mad cow disease this year.

By contrast, France, which slaughters about 6 million cattle, now tests about half of them, and Japan tests all 1.3 million it eats.

The Department of Agriculture says its program, which tested 20,000 cattle last year, is more than adequate to protect the public. But critics call the regimen lax and unscientific. They argue that there are too few tests, that too many meat plants escape testing, that the industry has too much control and that inspectors lack training.

These arguments gained force last week, when an international panel of advisers said the Department of Agriculture should adopt standards like those used in Europe: mad cow tests that take three hours to get results instead of a week, tests on all sick, injured or dead animals at ranches and rendering plants as well as at slaughterhouses, tests on all animals showing symptoms of the disease and, just to be sure, tests on some apparently healthy animals. 

Some critics contend the United States' program indicates the Agriculture Department does not want to find a diseased cow, for fear of losing $4 billion in exports. "I'd say they were designing it to minimize the chance of finding any," said Dr. Michael C. Hansen, who studies food safety for Consumers Union. 

Dr. Ron DeHaven, the department's chief veterinary officer, denies that, noting that testing has focused on downed animals, which are more likely to have the disease.

The agriculture secretary, Ann M. Veneman, has said "47 times the recommended international standard" of tests were conducted last year, which would mean 433 would have sufficed. But that standard refers only to testing of cattle already showing classic "mad" behavior, like nervousness, kicking when milked and attacking elders in the herd.

Since animals with such signs are rare, the department focuses on the much larger pool of animals crippled for any reason, like disease or a broken leg. It formerly assumed there were 200,000 "downers" going to slaughter in the country - which would mean only 12,500 tests were needed to establish the disease's existence with 95 percent probability. But it recently decided to include the 400,000 other downers it estimated were on farms and feedlots, which about doubled the number to be tested this year, to just under 40,000.

But some experts question the assumption that only downers are at risk, since many healthy-looking animals in Europe have tested positive.

The question became more acute last month, when Dave Louthan, the Washington State slaughterhouse worker who killed the only animal to test positive so far in the United States, insisted that it was not a downer. If the department decides to base its tests on walking cattle, the number of tests needed to say the country is disease-free soars.

Many experts say that if the United States does more testing, it will almost undoubtedly find more cases. 

"That was the pattern in Europe," Dr. Hansen said. "Blanket denials, then you find one, then once you go to widespread testing, you find more and more and more."

Critics say the current testing program is unscientific because so many plants are not included.

Last month, United Press International used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain 35,000 of the test results from 2001 to 2003. 

They showed that tests were done at fewer than 100 of the country's 700 slaughterhouses. The testing is voluntary, and some of the nation's biggest slaughterhouses, processing 5,000 head a day, did none at all. The four states that account for 70 percent of all beef - Nebraska, Kansas, Texas and Colorado - accounted for only 11 percent of the tests.

"It looks like they could only talk the really small plants into doing it," said Felicia Nestor, food safety director of the Government Accountability Project, a private program that protects whistleblowers. "That might let them say, if they found one: `Oh, it's a small, plant, an isolated incident.' "

Full story

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/09/national/nationalspecial2/09INSP.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position=
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