Mad Cow Lawyer & Attorney : Marler Clark : Mad Cow Blog

October 27, 2005

Reuters

Aya Takada

TOKYO - Japanese consumer groups said on Thursday they would launch a campaign to boycott U.S. beef, banned from Japan for nearly two years on concerns about mad cow disease, if the government decides to resume imports.

The government has said it would ease its ban if Japan's Food Safety Commission declares U.S. beef is as safe as domestic meat.

A commission subcommittee that has been assessing the safety of U.S. beef for five months is expected to reach a conclusion at a meeting on Oct. 31.

Yasuaki Yamaura, vice chairman of Consumers Union of Japan, said subcommittee members should not yield to growing pressure from the U.S. and Japanese governments to approve a resumption of imports, as they have acknowledged that U.S. safety measures against mad cow disease are insufficient.

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October 25, 2005

Reuters

TOKYO - A majority of Japanese are opposed to resuming imports of U.S. beef, banned since the discovery of mad cow disease in the United States in December 2003, a poll published on Wednesday showed.

The daily Asahi Shimbun said 67 percent were opposed to resuming U.S. beef imports, versus 21 percent in favor.

A Japanese panel is close to concluding a study on the safety of U.S. beef, and whether Japan should partially reopen its market. Some members of the panel have said they are concerned about the safety of American beef.

The poll showed that those opposed were the majority in all generations, while women were particularly against lifting the ban with 74 percent saying they disagreed with the move.

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October 26, 2005

Associated Press / Kyodo

TOKYOóAn expert panel on mad cow disease has agreed that there is little difference in the risks posed by beef from North American and Japanese cows, paving the way for lifting the ban on U.S. beef imports before U.S. President George W. Bush visits Japan next month.

But it is unclear whether Japanese consumers will be willing to buy American beef after the ban, which has been in place for 20 months, is removed. If sales are sluggish, the United States could get even more demanding, one government source said.

The panel of scientists, which is under Japan's independent Food Safety Commission, unveiled a report on Monday saying the risk of mad cow disease being found in North American beef is "extremely low" if import terms are met properly.

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Ban Imposed After U.S. Mad Cow Discovery

POSTED: 11:30 am CDT October 24, 2005

TOKYO -- A Japanese government panel on mad cow disease delayed a decision Monday on easing a two-year-old ban on U.S. beef imports. A member of the food safety panel told the Dow Jones Newswires that the decision is being put off until the next meeting.

This comes even though the group had prepared a draft report concluding the risk from American beef is very low.

The panel had been widely expected to send the report on to the Food Safety Commission, which would set a process in motion that could have led to resumption of the imports by the end of the year.

U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns was visiting Japan when word came down.

"There is a great deal of frustration in the United States that this problem has not been resolved after such a long time," he said.

The delay also risks tensions with the United States ahead of President George W. Bush's visit to Japan next month.

Japan imposed the ban Dec. 24, 2003, after mad cow disease was discovered in one animal in Washington state. Before the ban, Japan was the biggest overseas market for American beef.

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Sunday, October 23, 2005 ? Last updated 12:08 p.m. PT
By BECKY BOHRER
AP FARM WRITER

BILLINGS, Mont. -- Canada has shipped nearly 250,000 cattle to U.S. feedlots and slaughter plants in the three months since a ban on cattle from that country was lifted by a federal appeals court.

It hasn't been the flood some U.S. ranchers had feared, and remains below levels seen before the case of mad cow disease that led to the ban two years ago, economists and industry leaders say.

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Posted on Thu, Oct. 20, 2005
BY NICHOLAS JUNGMAN
The Wichita Eagle

A Japanese diplomat speaking Thursday in Wichita said the Japanese government is very close to lifting its ban on U.S. beef.

Junichi Ihara, acting deputy chief of mission at Japan's embassy in Washington, said that his country's Food Safety Commission "has almost come to the conclusion that U.S. beef is safe."

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Thailand was among dozens of countries that banned U.S. beef in December 2003 following the discovery of a cow infected with mad cow disease in Washington state.

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said it is time for other Asian markets, particularly Japan, once the biggest customer of U.S. beef, to follow.

"There is no justifiable reason for borders to be closed to U.S. beef," Johanns said in a statement from Geneva, where he was attending global trade talks with U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman.

Portman said the move reflects the relationship the U.S. and Thailand are trying to strengthen through a free trade agreement.

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Welcome to Mad Cow Madness! If you've ever wondered what's really going on with mad cow disease in the United States, here's the real story. Let's talk about this downer cow that was recently confirmed as having mad cow disease. It only took... let's see... seven months for the USDA to confirm that this cow had mad cow disease? Only seven months! Your taxpayer dollars are hard at work...

Here's my opinion of what happened: First, the cow gets mad cow disease, probably from consuming spinal cord tissue and brain parts of other dead cows that are typically fed to cattle as part of the everyday beef operations here in the United States. This was a Texas cow, born and raised somewhere in the United States, it seems, and slaughtered in Texas. Turns out it was a downer cow, which means it couldn't walk. So where do they send this cow? Well, to the pet food slaughterhouse, of course. That's where many of these diseased cows end up going -- right into the pet food products for your Fido.

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Debates raged in the U.S. about when to open the northern border to cattle trade again, but the Canadian Rancher's Association doesn't expect normal business to resume until 2007. Be sure to read the related article, Mad cow madness: USDA lies and the coming collapse of the U.S. beef industry.

See more articles like this one at www.MeatFactor.org

Original news summary: (http://www.gwinnettdailyonline.com/GDP/
archive/article9A9E944D151D41AD8E1F371C84A47318.asp)

There was hope the U.S. Department of Agriculture would publish a new rule this fall that would pave the way for renewed shipments of older cattle and breeding stock starting next year.
Now the Canadian Cattlemen's Association and other groups are warning producers not to expect the border to fully reopen until some time in 2007 -- four years after mad-cow disease was discovered in an Alberta cow.
There were more than 900,000 surplus OTM cattle across the country as of last July, according to Statistics Canada.
Industry experts say the USDA wants to be extra careful in developing the new trade rule to ensure it can withstand lawsuits from protectionist groups such as R-CALF USA.
This year, R-CALF, which represents about 18,000 U.S. ranchers, went to court and temporarily derailed the USDA rule that eventually led to the border reopening in July to Canadian cattle under 30 months of age.
"USDA is very aware of the fact that R-CALF will probably direct litigation at this new rule and they are trying to make it as perfect as they can," said Darcy Davis, chairman of Alberta Beef Producers.
Canada's push for the second rule is based on the same premise that supported the current rule allowing the trade in young cattle to resume: risk factors for bovine spongiform encephalopathy in Canada are no different than in the United States.
John Masswohl, director of international relations for the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, said he expects the USDA to conduct careful risk assessments before publishing its new rule, probably some time next summer.
With some U.S. beef processing plants laying off staff or shutting down due to a shortage of supply, re-establishing the full cattle trade with Canada would make dollars and sense.

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The journal Brain Research has recently published the results of research work by scientists from the University of Navarra.

The work describes the presence and location of the cellular prion protein (PrPC) in the brain of the rat and characterises the neurones expressed therein, above all within the cerebral cortex of this rodent.

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10/17/2005
By REBECCA BOONE
The Associated Press

BOISE, Idaho (AP) ó From the moment Joan Kingsford first saw her husband stagger in his welding shop, she wanted two things: His recovery and to know what made him sick.

She got neither. Alvin Kingsford, 72, died recently of suspected sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the fatal brain-wasting illness. The disease can be conclusively diagnosed only with an autopsy, which did not take place.

State and federal health officials are trying to get to the bottom of nine reported cases of suspected sporadic CJD in Idaho this year. Sporadic, or naturally occurring, CJD differs from the permutation dubbed variant CJD, which is caused by eating mad-cow-tainted beef and has killed at least 180 people in the United Kingdom and continental Europe since the 1990s.

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THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- The United States is willing to distribute to poor countries 363,000 foreign packaged meals that could not be donated to Katrina victims because of concerns about mad cow disease.

The ready-to-eat meals, sent mostly by Britain, should never have reached U.S. shores because of a long-standing ban on beef imports from Britain and several other European countries.

The ban was overlooked in the chaotic aftermath of the Gulf Coast storm.

State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said the Agriculture Department stepped in on Sept. 6 to block distribution of the packages - but not before 130,000 meals were parceled out to victims.

About 330,000 packages from Britain were impounded along with an additional 33,000 from Germany, Russia, Spain and France, Ereli said.

The food has been languishing on shelves at an Arkansas warehouse for more than a month. Ereli said U. S. ambassadors in a number of countries have passed the word that the packages are available.

"We want to find needy populations and get them there as soon as possible," Ereli said. He was unable to say when the U.S. offer was sent out. The expiration date on some of the packages is early 2006.

The Agriculture Department said it is not suggesting that the meals are unsafe but that they do not meet importation standards.

The prohibition was put in place in 1997 after the degenerative disease that affects the central nervous system was found in British cattle

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10/14/2005, 3:23 p.m. ET
By DAVID KRAVETS
The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ó A federal appeals court said Friday it will not reconsider its July decision allowing the resumption of Canadian cattle imports into the United States.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had allowed federal agricultural officials to reopen the border to Canadian cattle, which were banned in May 2003 after a cow in Alberta was found to have mad cow disease.

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By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The agent that causes mad cow disease, scrapie and chronic wasting disease in deer and elk may sometimes be spread through urine, Swiss researchers reported on Thursday.

They found that, under certain conditions in mice, the deformed brain proteins known as prions that transmit the disease could be found in urine.

"We tested whether chronic inflammatory kidney disorders would trigger excretion of prion infectivity into urine," Adriano Aguzzi of the University Hospital of Zurich and colleagues wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.

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By JEFF BARNARD
The Associated Press

BROTHERS, Ore.

Back in 1986, with red meat becoming a dirty word in a more health-conscious United States, a group of cattle ranchers gathered in Doc and Connie Hatfield's barn to talk about finding a new market for their beef.

After hearing from a trainer at a health club, they chose what has come to be known as natural beef _ produced without growth hormones or antibiotics, and fed exclusively vegetable feeds _ and market it directly to natural food stores, where they could get a premium price.

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By JOHN COTTER
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Canadian Press

EDMONTON -- Canadian cattle producers must be prepared to wait even longer for the U.S. border to fully reopen to normal trade, industry experts say.

There was hope the U.S. Department of Agriculture would publish a new rule this fall that would pave the way for renewed shipments of older cattle and breeding stock starting next year.

Now the Canadian Cattlemen's Association and other groups are warning producers not to expect the border to fully reopen until some time in 2007 -- four years after mad-cow disease was discovered in an Alberta cow.

Such a delay would hit the wallets of cattle producers across the country, especially people in the dairy and beef-breeding business.

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HOUSTON - The Food and Drug Administration this week proposed banning some high-risk cattle parts from all animal feed to fight the spread of mad cow disease.

Since 1997, cattle brains and spinal cords have been banned from cattle feed. The FDA proposal would expand the ban to poultry, pig and pet foods.

Consumer groups, however, said it falls far short of protecting consumers by failing to ban other materials from feed such as cow blood, poultry litter and fats.

Cattle brains and spinal cords are considered high-risk materials because they carry the agent that transmits bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.

The FDA's new rule would ban the use of feed containing those tissues from cows older than 30 months and from cattle of any age not inspected and passed for human consumption, as well as tallow with more than 0.15 percent insoluble impurities.

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Theyíre called unneeded or inadequate
By SCOTT CANON
The Kansas City Star

ìTheyíre not excluding nearly enough. So weíre taking on risks that got Europe into trouble.î

Michael Hansen, a biologist with Consumers Union

Cattle industry regulators this week moved ahead with new efforts to detect and prevent mad cow disease ó taking actions that frustrated both the beef industry and its critics.

The two new measures have been described by the industry and regulators in the past as unnecessary. And critics, who think the country is vulnerable to an outbreak, called them inadequate.

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Thursday, October 6, 2005
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

Even for Bush administration work, the latest federal attempt to deal with mad cow disease falls short of good enough.

The Food and Drug Administration announced new rules Tuesday banning the use of some remains of older cattle in animal feed. But the Bush FDA bent to industry wishes to continue several noxious practices, including the use of a calf milk replacement made from cattle blood.

The administration has stumbled so badly on mad cow that, without the benefit of the meat-packing industry's sordid history, it would be possible to imagine that a fully deregulated market could do better. The government keeps amending its regulations with half-measures that don't solve the problem. At the same time, the feds seem prone to bureaucratic stumbles over market solutions, such as last year's U.S. Department of Agriculture decision to block a beef producer from testing all its cattle for mad cow to satisfy Japanese consumers.

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The FDA wants to further restrict the use of cattle remains in pet food and animal feed.
By PHILIP BRASHER
October 5, 2005

Washington, D.C. ó The Food and Drug Administration proposed Tuesday to tighten protections against mad cow disease by banning the use of high-risk cattle remains as a protein supplement in animal feed or pet food.

The new rules are intended to protect against cattle being inadvertently exposed to contaminated feed.

Industry experts say the measures could make it harder for farms to dispose of dying or dead cattle that can't be used for human food. The restrictions, which would bring U.S. rules in line with Canada's, also could end the use of beef and bone meal in hog feed.

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By CHRISTOPHER SMITH
Associated Press Writer

BOISE, Idaho ó Preliminary tests on the remains of two Idaho women show they died of the brain-wasting illness Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, but additional tests are needed to determine whether it was the naturally occurring form or the variant related to mad cow disease.

Idaho Department of Health and Welfare officials announced the findings today after notifying the families of the women, one of whom was in her 60s and lived in Twin Falls County and the other who was previously identified by her family as 53-year-old Kathy Isenberg of St. Maries. Because of privacy restrictions, state health officials do not release names of individuals suspected of dying from the disease, which can only be conclusively diagnosed post-mortem.

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By James W. Ironside

Optimists are proclaiming that variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), the human formóalways fatalóof bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad-cow disease, is on the wane. Obviously, given the degree of suffering and public anxiety that variant CJD has caused, the possibility that it is receding is welcome news. But is it true?

The CJD belongs to the family of what are called prion diseases, a unique group of neurodegenerative diseases that can be transmitted. Although the precise nature of the diseaseís transmission remains uncertain, a key event in these disorders is the conversion of the prion proteinís normal cells to an abnormal form that appears to be the major (if not the sole) component of the infection.

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