USDA to begin testing low-risk cattle
August 8, 2005
Meatingplace.com
Pete Hisey
With over 425,000 high-risk cattle tested so far in its 18-month surveillance program to measure levels of infection by bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the national herd, USDA will soon test 20,000 older but non-symptomatic cattle on a statistically valid national basis, as it promised to do at the beginning of the program.
APHIS spokesman Jim Rogers said that the agency has been kept busy by the testing of suspect animals through the first 14 months of the program, but will now start testing healthy cattle at slaughter.
Rogers also said that the surveillance program does have regional goals to make it statistically valid but that the agency has not released those figures yet. At the end of the program, USDA will release a wealth of data about the tested cattle, including location, age where available, symptoms and the like.
