AR-News: (US) Democrats charge USDA with mad cow risk

[animalconcerns at fastmail.us]

Senate Democrats on Wednesday charged the Agriculture Department with
introducing mad cow contamination to the United States last year by
quietly relaxing a blanket import ban. The ban had been imposed after
the first case of the brain-wasting disease was discovered in Alberta in
May 2003.

Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, along with Sens.
Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Mark Dayton, D-Minn., asked Phyllis Fong, the
USDA inspector general, to investigate what they called "breaches of
public trust" created by changing procedures in a way that could have
resulted in contaminated meat entering the United States.

An Agriculture Department spokeswoman said the imported meat met new and
more stringent regulations Canada imposed after the discovery of the
case. The second case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow
disease, in North America was diagnosed in a Washington state cow last
December.

In response to a court suit brought by the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action
Legal Fund, the USDA last month admitted that Agriculture Secretary Ann
Veneman relaxed a prohibition against Canadian imports in August to
permit some processed beef products to be sent to American plants.

full story:
http://www.timesrecordnews.com/trn/nw_washington/article/0,1891,TRN_5707_2988298,00.html

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