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

November 28, 2005

Meatingplace.com

Pete Hisey

Illinois has been awarded $233,528 by the Food and Drug Administration to increase its monitoring of cattle feed. Under the program, the Illinois Department of Agriculture will test feed supplies produced on Illinois farms in addition to ongoing testing of feed produced commercially.

"We already inspect Illinois feed mills and are confident our commercial cattle feed is wholesome," said Chuck Hartke, Illinois agriculture director. In addition to farms, the state will inspect equipment used to blend, mix and transport feed to guard against the introduction of specified risk materials (SRMs) to the state's cattle feed supply.

Illinois has recently hired 10 additional inspectors and three staff veterinarians for the Bureau of Meat and Poultry and has instituted a mileage reimbursement for farmers who bring non-ambulatory cattle to its laboratories for testing for bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

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November 28, 2005

Associated Press / Kyodo

OSAKAóThe United States urged Japan anew Monday to end the two-year-old import ban on North American-grown beef, saying Japan has not lived up to last year's agreement to end the ban.

Daniel Berman, minister-counselor for agricultural affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, told a news conference that more than a year has elapsed since the Japanese government agreed in October last year to grant the U.S. request to restart imports.

At that time, Japan said it would recommence imports of beef from cattle aged up to 20 months at an early date without setting a date for resumption.

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November 29, 2005

New Zealand Herald

Reuters

SEOUL - South Korea, facing US pressure to follow neighbouring Japan, is due to decide today whether to lift a ban on American beef imports imposed at the end of 2003 after a case of mad cow disease.

A Government agriculture official said South Korea, previously the No 3 export market for US beef, could resume imports in the first half of next year if a key committee cleared American beef on safety grounds.

Japan, once the top importer of US beef, also has a ban, but opened the way for a likely resumption of imports last month.

South Korea's animal quarantine advice committee will decide whether to resume US imports.

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A man from Great Britain has been diagnosed with the human form of mad cow disease, the second documented U.S. case of the illness, the federal Centers for Disease Control said Monday.

The man in all likelihood contracted variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the United Kingdom. But because his symptoms began while he was living in Houston, he will be listed as a U.S. case, as is customary.

"Almost certainly, this case represents a continuation of the outbreak that is going on in the United Kingdom," said Lawrence B. Schonberger, a CDC medical epidemiologist.

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November 12, 2005

Associated Press

Libby Quaid

WASHINGTON -- The government plans to maintain indefinitely its faster level of testing for mad cow disease, rather than scaling back testing in December as originally envisioned.

With the lucrative Japanese market poised to reopen to American cattle, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns says he wants government scientists to continue testing about 1,000 cattle a day.

"I have just been very reluctant to even set a date as to when we would bring that to a close," Johanns said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's safe to say the enhanced surveillance is going to extend beyond the end of December."

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By Shea Van Hoy
The Morning News

FAYETTEVILLE -- The former lead counsel to the U.S. Department of Agriculture told University of Arkansas students the legal issues surrounding mad-cow disease are about as complex as the illness itself.

Nancy Bryson spoke to about 40 people at the Leflar Law Center and detailed behind-the-scenes legal work that helped ease public fear about mad-cow disease, restore cattle imports from Canada and move closer to beef-trade resumption with Japan. Trade restrictions have hampered business for Springdale-based Tyson Foods Inc., the world's largest meat company.

Mad-cow disease, formally called bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is a brain-wasting disease found in cows. A variant form of mad-cow disease has proved fatal in humans.

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WASHINGTON - By the time the US government completes its tests of cattle feed, it may be too late to prevent the spread of mad cow disease, according to a report issued on Wednesday by Congress's investigative arm.

In nearly half of the 989 samples tested between August 2003 and June of this year, it took the US Food and Drug Administration more than a month to determine if they contained banned protein products responsible for mad cow disease.

The report released by Congress's nonpartisan Government Accountability Office also found that in 21 of those cases, the review took more than 100 days to complete.

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GAO questions safeguard against mad cow disease

By LIBBY QUAID
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Government investigators say testing can be too slow to prevent cattle from eating feed that might be contaminated, a flaw they cited in a program to help stop mad cow disease from spreading.
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Feed safeguards are the most important firewall against mad cow disease, said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who sought the report by the Government Accountability Office.

"If FDA's testing program is not catching violations, and catching them in time, that needs to be corrected immediately," Harkin said Wednesday.

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November 2, 2005
Food Standards Agency
http://www.foodstandards.gov.uk/news/newsarchive/2005/nov/newbseinfo
The Food Standards Agency has today issued publications for consumers providing updated information on BSE and explaining new UK-wide BSE testing controls that are due to come into force next week.
The new BSE testing controls replace a blanket ban on cattle aged over thirty months entering the food chain.
The booklet, 'BSE & Beef: New Controls Explained', describes the new framework of BSE controls that will apply to older cattle. A smaller leaflet, which summarises the changes and key information, is also available and is being offered to all major retailers and butchersí associations to make it available to their customers.

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November 2, 2005
Meatnews.com
Chris Harris, Editor
http://www.meatnews.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Article&artNum=10484
CANADA: Cattle ranchers claim the handling of the 2003 bovine spongiform encephalopathy discovery caused them to suffer financially.
A group of Canadian cattle ranchers named Ridley Inc., Winnipeg, Manitoba, and the Canadian government as co-defendants in a class-action lawsuit filed in four provinces.

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November 2, 2005
Dallas Morning News
Katie Fairbank
Researchers hunting the herd linked to the first U.S. case of mad cow disease found most of the animals were slaughteredóand possibly in the human food supplyóeven before the government probe began.
The federal and state governments closed an investigation into the infected cow, which was raised at an unidentified Texas ranch, at the end of August.
But the Dallas Morning News obtained details about the search for the 413 cows and calves on Tuesday under a Texas Open Records request. About 350 of them, or roughly 85 per cent, were sent for slaughter.

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November 2, 2005
Meatingplace.com
Pete Hisey
The Daily Yomiuri, a Tokyo daily newspaper, reported that both the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry and the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry plan to base permanent meat inspectors in the United States and Canada if and when the market reopens to beef from the two countries.
The Health Ministry will send two inspectors, one for each country, beginning early next year. They will travel to approved meat processors on a regular basis to ensure that only cattle 20 months of age or younger are slaughtered and that all specified risk materials are removed and handled appropriately. There are about 40 approved processors in the United States alone. The Agriculture Ministry is considering sending specialists in livestock epidemic prevention.
The scientific panel that is expected to deliver a final approval of beef imports from the United States and Canada to the independent Food Safety Committee today also is expected to recommend that all imported meat be closely watched and that imports be suspended immediately if any part of the agreed upon agreement is violated.

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TOKYO (CP) - The risk of mad cow infection in U.S. beef is nearly as low as Japanese beef if proper precautions are taken, a government panel ruled Monday, a decision expected to lead to an easing of an import ban that has caused tensions with Washington.

The panel on mad cow disease forwarded their report to the appropriate ministries for a month of hearings before rendering a decision on the ban, which was imposed in December 2003 after the discovery of the first U.S. case of the bovine illness.

"Based on the assumption that all precautions are taken as requested, we consider the difference in risk between U.S. and Japanese beef to be extremely small," panel chairman Yasuhiro Yoshikawa said, reading the report to his colleagues.

Media reports say the decision will lead to the resumption of imports of beef products from U.S. cows younger than 21 months old as early as the end of this year. No case of mad cow has ever been discovered in animals of that age.

Japan closed its border to U.S. and Canadian beef in 2003 after cases of mad-cow disease were reported in the two countries.

Before the ban, Japan was the most lucrative overseas market for U.S. beef, and an increasingly impatient Washington has pushed hard for a resumption of the trade.

Last week, 21 U.S. senators introduced legislation that would force President George Bush to impose tariffs on Japan if it does not lift the ban.

After lengthy negotiations, the U.S. and Japanese governments this year agreed that Tokyo would allow the import of U.S. beef from the younger cows. The Japanese side, however, said approval was needed by the Food Safety Commission.

Still, Japanese consumers remain wary of American beef, with recent polls showing that nearly 70 per cent of opposed lifting the ban.

Further delays in overturning the ban could cause more tensions with the United States ahead of a Nov. 15-16 visit by Bush.

Scientists agree that beef from cattle infected with mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, causes a fatal brain disorder in humans.

Canadian beef is still banned in Japan but that country's ambassador to Canada, Sadaaki Numata, said over the weekend that both sides are working to resolve the problem.

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