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

Aug 25, 2006 (CIDRAP News) ñ A procedural error at a feed mill might have resulted in contamination of cattle feed with banned materials and caused Canada's seventh case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, the Canadian government said yesterday.

The government also said the cow involved died of mastitis, not BSE. The animal was showing no outward signs of BSE at the time of death, but was tested because it met other criteria for BSE testing, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) reported.

The case, reported Jul 13, was in an Alberta dairy cow born in April 2002, years after Canada's 1997 ban on feeding of cattle parts to cattle and other ruminant animals. Because of this, the CFIA had said the cow's feed history would be the main focus of its investigation of the case.

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By Greg Quinn

Aug. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Canada is investigating a possible eighth case of mad-cow disease, after a provincial laboratory's test was inconclusive.

The government received a sample that came from ``a mature animal'' and a federal lab will test to confirm if it has the disease, Alain Charette, a spokesman for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in Ottawa, said today in a telephone interview. Charette said he didn't know which province sent the sample.

Canada confirmed the seventh case of the disease July 13 in a 50-month-old dairy cow born after feed restrictions were imposed in 1997. The country's food inspection agency in June tightened its animal feed restrictions to speed up domestic eradication of mad-cow disease, or BSE, which stands for bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

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24.aug.06
Reuters
Marcy Nicholson

WINNIPEG, Manitoba - Canada's seventh mad cow case since 2003 most likely contracted the brain-wasting disease from contaminated feed, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said on Thursday.

The 50-month-old cow was born years after 1997, when Canada instituted a ban on protein from cattle and other ruminants, such as sheep and goats, in cattle feed. The ban aimed to prevent the disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, which is believed to be caused by contaminated feed.

The federal food safety agency confirmed the animal had mad cow disease in July, making it the youngest animal in Canada to test positive for the disease since the first native-born case was discovered in 2003.

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23.aug.06
Canadian Food Inspection Agency

OTTAWA - Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was today confirmed by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in a mature beef cow from Alberta. No part of the animal's carcass entered the human food or animal feed systems.

Preliminary information provided by the owner and an examination conducted by a private veterinarian estimate the animal's age was between eight and ten years of age. Based on this range, exposure to the BSE agent likely occurred either before the feed ban's introduction or during its early implementation. The estimated age of this animal is consistent with those of previous Canadian cases and exposure to a very low level of BSE infectivity.

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13.aug.06
Tulsa World, Okla.
McClatchy-Tribune Business News
John Dobberstein

ARKANSAS CITY, Kan. -- After another futile visit to the nation's capital, John Stewart faced a tough decision.
Give up, or let the courts decide.

So Stewart, founder and CEO of Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the right to test every animal slaughtered at his plant for mad cow disease.

The lawsuit has placed Creekstone -- a cutting-edge meat packer 25 miles north of Ponca City -- in the national spotlight. Stewart has appeared on National Public Radio to plead his case. Other media have interviewed him, and interest groups and lawmakers have joined the fray with their opinions.

The USDA says it has legal jurisdiction over mad cow testing. But Stewart says the agency isn't taking the mad cow threat seriously enough.

In fact, Stewart said he plans to form a worldwide panel of experts this year to study the disease and make judgments about its risks and prevalence in the U.S. He said he would share the results with the USDA.

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By JOHN DOBBERSTEIN World Staff Writer
8/12/2006

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Creekstone Farms, which wants to test all its animals, is at odds with the USDA.

ARKANSAS CITY, Kan. -- After another futile visit to the nation's capital, John Stewart faced a tough decision.
Give up, or let the courts decide.

So Stewart, founder and CEO of Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the right to test every animal slaughtered at his plant for mad cow disease.

The lawsuit has placed Creekstone -- a cutting-edge meat packer 25 miles north of Ponca City -- in the national spotlight. Stewart has appeared on National Public Radio to plead his case. Other media have interviewed him, and interest groups and lawmakers have joined the fray with their opinions.

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Survey finds 80% reluctant to eat the beef despite lifting of mad cow ban.
August 12 2006: 9:41 AM EDT

TOKYO (Reuters) -- Most Japanese are extremely reluctant to eat U.S. beef, despite the ending of import bans imposed after outbreaks of mad cow disease in the United States, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported Saturday.

Sales of U.S. beef resumed in Japan this week after the lifting of the latest ban, imposed in January when Japanese inspectors found prohibited material in a shipment of veal.

Eighty percent of those surveyed by the newspaper said they were concerned about the safety of U.S. beef.

Of 1,741 people quizzed for the survey last weekend, 45 percent said they did not want to eat U.S. beef and 43 percent said they wanted to think about the issue before deciding.

Only 10 percent said they wanted to eat U.S. beef, the Yomiuri reported.

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USDA eases rules on bovine imports from Canada
Wed Aug 9, 2006 4:35pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Agriculture Department proposed on Wednesday to allow imports of Canadian poultry and pork processed at plants that also handle cattle, in a sign of declining fears of mad cow disease.

USDA now requires that Canadian meat products derived from nonruminant poultry and pigs come from facilities separate from those processing ruminant animals such as cattle, which are susceptible to mad cow disease.

Ruminant animals collect swallowed food in a part of their stomachs for further chewing.

The department said because products derived from nonruminant animals pose a small risk of getting mad cow disease from contaminated products, it was "inconsistent" to have them processed in a separate facility.

Canada was the only country categorized as a bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) "minimal-risk" region in USDA's final rule published in January 2005. The proposed changes to this rule issued on Wednesday were published in the U.S. government's Federal Register.

The changes also would allow bovines, sheep and goats imported from Canada to be identified by other ways such as tattoos in addition to an ear tag. The earlier rule specified an ear tag because that is the required means of identification under Canada's national livestock identification program.

Lastly, the new measure would expand imports to include gelatin derived from bovine hides in addition to bones, which was currently allowed.

"We do not believe these restrictions are necessary to prevent the introduction of BSE into the United States," USDA said in its report.

The public has until October 10 to comment on the new rule.

The changes come two weeks after USDA halted a proposal to allow imports of older Canadian cattle after a dairy cow contracted mad cow disease years after Canada implemented safeguards.

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09.aug.06

National Post

Reuters

WINNIPEG - The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said yesterday it could not confirm the birth farm of Canada's sixth mad cow case since 2003 due to a lack of information on the animal's history. The mature cross-bred beef cow was "at least 16 years old" when it died on a Manitoba farm earlier this summer, the federal food safety agency said in a release as it wrapped up its investigation. The brain wasting disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE, is believed to be transmitted through contaminated feed. The affected animal was born well before the 1997 feed ban on cattle feed containing protein from rendered cattle and other ruminants. Since cattle are most likely to contract the disease in their first year of life, the CFIA said the cow was most likely exposed to the BSE agent in 1989 or 1990, when the inclusion of meat and bone meal in cattle feed was both accepted and legal. The cow, which was confirmed to have BSE on July 4, was purchased by its owner in 1992. No part of the animal's carcass entered the human food or animal feed supply, the agency said. Investigators traced the location of the 21 herdmates that had been purchased with the affected animal. Only one was still alive and tested negative for BSE, the agency said. The CFIA confirmed a 50-month-old dairy cow from Alberta tested positive for mad cow disease later in July, making it Canada's seventh case since 2003. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been observing the Canadian investigation, which is nearly complete.

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Aug. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Japan will today inspect the first shipment of U.S. beef to arrive since the country ended a six- month ban imposed over mad cow disease concern.

Costco Wholesale Japan Inc., the Japanese unit of the U.S. discount warehouse retailer, imported the 5.1-ton shipment, processed by Cargill Inc., in Colorado state, Japan's Ministry of Agricultural, Forestry and Fisheries said in a statement.

Japan and more than 60 nations banned U.S. beef after mad- cow disease was found in Washington state in December 2003, causing losses at U.S. meatpackers such as Cargill and Tyson Foods Inc., the world's biggest beef producer. Japan halted imports of U.S. beef again on Jan. 20, after banned material was found in a shipment of veal just weeks after it lifted the two- year embargo.

Before the ban, Japan was the biggest buyer of U.S. beef, purchasing $1.4 billion of the $3.8 billion exported in 2003.

The first shipment since the ban was ended on July 28 arrived yesterday at Narita International Airport, east of Tokyo, the farm ministry's statement said.

Japanese inspectors checked U.S. meatpackers and approved 34 as exporters to Japan after the U.S. pressed Japan to re-open its market.

Mad-cow disease, which is also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, is spread in cattle by tainted feed. The human form of the disease, contracted when people eat meat from infected animals, has been blamed for more than 150 deaths, mostly in the U.K. where the disease was first reported in the 1980s.

To contact the reporter for this story:
Megumi Yamanaka in Tokyo at myamanaka@bloomberg.net.

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Shipment of U.S. Beef Arrives in Japan

By MARI YAMAGUCHI
Associated Press Writer
Published August 7, 2006

The first shipment of U.S. beef since Japan lifted its import ban has arrived in Japan on Monday, virtually ending its absence from market for more than two and half years. The shipment of 5.1 tons of American chilled beef arrived on a cargo flight at the airport and its importer and government officials are expected inspect the contents on Tuesday.

Japan imported its first shipment of American beef since January on Monday, resuming a once-booming business that has been crippled for nearly three years over fears of mad cow disease.

The 5.1 tons of American chilled beef arrived on a cargo flight at Tokyo's Narita airport, and its importer and government officials were expected to inspect it on Tuesday, said Health Ministry official Masanori Imagawa.

Japan banned American beef in December 2003 after the first case of mad cow disease in the United States. That ban was eased in December 2005, but was re-imposed after forbidden spine bones were found in an import shipment of veal in January.

Monday's shipment, which follows the latest lifting of the beef ban on July 27, came from U.S. beef giant Cargill Inc. and was imported by Costco Wholesale Japan, the Japanese unit of the American retailer.

Costco employees, airport inspectors and Health Ministry officials were to scrutinize the entire shipment in a three-tiered process to make sure no banned products slip through, said Imagawa, who is in charge of customs and quarantine.

Previously, officials inspected only part of the shipments.

"We'll go through all boxes to make sure there is no problem, so inspection will probably take all day," Imagawa said.

Japan the U.S. beef industry's most lucrative overseas market before December 2003, importing some $1.4 billion worth of meat. However, concerns over mad cow disease, known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, have severely damaged Japanese faith in the safety of the imports. Those fears were compounded by the faulty shipment in January.

Recent public polls have showed the majority of Japanese consumers are planning to stay away from U.S. beef, and major restaurants and supermarkets have said they have no immediate plans to sell it.

The reopening of the market followed a rigorous series of meetings, public hearings and inspections of American beef processing plants.

Japan so far has approved 33 of 35 such plants visited by government officials. One of the remaining two was deemed eligible for export, but only with follow-up surveillance. The approval for the other was pending.

Under the current agreement, all U.S. beef shipped to Japan must come from cattle aged 20 months or less, and no brain or spinal material can be included because it is considered at risk of carrying the disease.

U.S. officials have expressed interest in expanding the category of eligible beef to cattle aged 30 months or younger, since no cases of BSE have been discovered in cows that old, but Japan officials have rejected that for now.

BSE is a brain degenerative disease in cattle. In humans, eating meat contaminated with BSE is linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a rare and deadly nerve disease.

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From USA Today Opinion

Updated 8/3/2006 8:44 PM ET

Creekstone Farms, a Kansas beef producer, wants to reassure customers that its cattle are safe to eat by testing them all for mad cow disease. Sounds like a smart business move, but there's one problem: The federal government won't let the company do it.

OPPOSING VIEW: Our safeguards are working

The U.S. Department of Agriculture ó invoking an obscure 1913 law intended to thwart con artists from peddling bogus hog cholera serum to pig farmers ó is blocking companies from selling the testing kits to Creekstone.

USDA is doing the bidding of large cattle barons afraid that Creekstone's marketing will force them to do the same tests to stay competitive. It's true that the incidence of mad cow disease is quite low. But there's little logic in stopping a company from exceeding regulations to meet the demands of its customers, or protecting its rivals from legitimate competition.

Not only is USDA blocking Creekstone, the department said last month that it's reducing its mad cow testing program by 90%. The industry and its sympathetic regulators seem to believe that the problem isn't mad cow disease. It's tests that find mad cow.

The department tests only 1% of the roughly 100,000 cattle slaughtered daily. The new plan will test only 110 cows a day.

By cutting back on testing, USDA will save about $35 million a year. That's a pittance compared with the devastation the cattle industry could face if just one human case of mad cow disease is linked to domestic beef.

The brain-wasting disease ó known formally as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE ó is extremely rare but extremely deadly. Since 1986, it has killed more than 150 people worldwide, mostly in Britain, who ate infected meat.

Scientists don't know the exact cause of BSE but think it's spread when cows are fed ground-up parts of cattle and other cud-chewing animals. The government has tightened cattle-feed rules, but loopholes still permit cattle blood as a milk substitute and chicken waste as a protein supplement.

Canada has found four cows with BSE this year, and at least one was born after similar cattle feed rules were imposed that should have prevented the animal from being infected. Acting out of an abundance of caution, U.S. plans to increase Canadian beef and cattle imports have been put on hold until the new cases are investigated. That makes sense, but it's hard to justify cutbacks on U.S. testing at the same time we demand other nations provide greater assurances.

Sixty-five nations have full or partial restrictions on importing U.S. beef products because of fears that the testing isn't rigorous enough. As a result, U.S. beef product exports declined from $3.8 billion in 2003, before the first mad cow was detected in the USA, to $1.4 billion last year. Foreign buyers are demanding that USDA do more.

"In a nation dedicated to free market competition," says John Stewart, CEO of Creekstone, which is suing USDA, "a company that wants to do more than is required to ensure the quality of its product and to satisfy customer demand should be allowed to do so."

When regulators disagree with reasoning like that, you know the game is rigged.

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