Mad Cow Facts

December 8, 2004 from JunkScience.com

When the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced on November 23, 2004 at about 6pm ET that the test in the most recent mad cow scare was negative, the agency had already been pre-empted (not really, read on please) by the anti-meat activist group Public Citizen, which had issued a media release on Nov. 23 at 9:37 am on Progressive Newswire.

Public Citizen’s release said, however, “Today’s announcement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that the United States has confirmed its second case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), known as mad cow disease, reinforces the need for federal regulators to close the loopholes that remain in our BSE prevention policies.”

Not only was Public Citizen’s media release wrong, but they were wrong about eight hours ahead of the USDA’s announcement of the actual result.

Don’t bother going to Progressive Newswire to look for the Public Citizen release — the web site apparently was scrubbed long ago. But the media release does yet live on the web — this copy was posted on some MSN group more than five hours ahead of the USDA’s announcement.

Not only did Public Citizen jump the gun, but I think they were standing in front of the gun when it went off.

December 7, 2004 from the Associated Press

(Excerpt - for complete article please visit CNN.com)

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Jamaica has lifted a ban on U.S. beef imports imposed last year after a single case of mad cow disease was detected in the United States, the agriculture minister said Tuesday.

After months of negotiations, Agriculture Minister Roger Clarke said Jamaica was satisfied that U.S. officials had contained the disease and implemented stringent measures on cattle and beef products to guard against a future outbreak.

But he said the island would continue to block the import of a small number of beef products like bone marrow and brain for safety reasons, as well as meat from cows older than 2 1/2 years, which are considered more susceptible to mad cow disease.

The agreement, which takes effect immediately, also ensures that all U.S. beef entering Jamaica must come from processing plants approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and derive from cattle not fed with animal byproducts like bone meal, Clarke said.

“We have lifted the ban, but we’re specific as to the animals that come in,” Clarke said in a telephone interview.

In a statement, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman praised Jamaica’s decision, calling it an “important step forward in getting U.S. beef markets opened.”

Jamaica was among several Caribbean countries to ban U.S. beef imports after a case of mad cow disease was detected in Washington state last December. Investigators traced the infected cow to Canada.

Complete article….

By Dan Murphy on December 3, 2004
For Meatingplace.com

Excerpt - for complete text, please visit Meatingplace.com

(Editor’s note: The following speech was delivered by Meatingplace.com columnist Dan Murphy at the 86th Annual Meeting of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation earlier this week. More than 1,200 independent farmers and agricultural industry representatives attended the event.)

DES MOINES, Iowa — Thank you for the invitation to be with you today, as the politicians love to say, “in the great state of Iowa.”

But I’m afraid my message is a sobering one, because make no mistake: There is a war on, my friends. A war that involves the occupation of both physical territory — your farmland — as well as the battlefield of public opinion.

On one side is a functional alliance of activists, agitators and the leaders of what I call the “anti-industry” industry. On the other side are the rest of us.

The activists have numerous volunteers, contributors and supporters, front-line troops, so to speak. They’re well-equipped, well-funded and totally committed. We have only ourselves and our often conflicting opinions on how best to function as taxpayers, citizens and members of the community.

These combatants and their extremist agenda are the key factor driving this war on our entire food system. Let’s take a closer look at the people aiming to put America’s farmers, livestock producers and ranchers out of business. They fall into three main categories:

The Activists. These are the born crusaders. The dreamers. The ones who are always fighting for some cause — or against the businesses that feed, clothe and provide virtually everything we require in modern society. I call this the “No Compromise” category, and it’s typified by people such as:

Ralph Nader, the ex-consumer campaigner-turned perennial Green Party presidential candidate

Jeremy Rifkin, the “Beyond Beef” vegetarian extremist now advising the European Union on the U.S. beef hormone ban

Neal Barnard, of the Physician’s Committee on Responsible Medicine, a PETA front group that is neither responsible nor comprised of physicians

(more…)

Release No. 0508.04
Contact:
Office Of Communications (202)720 4623

Statement by John Clifford, Deputy Administrator Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service on November 23, 2004

“The USDA National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) in Ames, Iowa, has determined that the inconclusive screening test sample reported on Nov. 18 has tested negative for BSE upon confirmatory testing.

“The Nov. 18 sample is the first that has tested inconclusive under an APHIS protocol announced in August that calls for public reporting of screening results only after two reactive screens. NVSL used the immunohistochemistry (IHC) test, an internationally-recognized gold standard test for BSE, and received a negative result on Nov. 22. Because the Nov. 18 screening test results were reactive in both the first and second screens, NVSL scientists made the recommendation to run the IHC test a second time. On Nov. 23 they reported the second IHC test was negative. Negative results from both IHC tests make us confident that the animal in question is indeed negative for BSE.

“APHIS began an enhanced surveillance program on June 1 and to date has tested over 121,000 samples for BSE. Screening tests are designed to be extremely sensitive and false positives are not unexpected. APHIS has reported three inconclusives including the Nov. 18 sample and all have tested negative on confirmatory testing.”

Read the Center for Global Food Issues Analysis of the Inconclusive BSE Test
or…
Read the Original USDA Release

By John Heilprin on November 23, 2004
From the Associated Press

Excerpt - for complete text please visit The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

WASHINGTON — A cow the Agriculture Department had suspected of carrying mad cow disease was declared free of the illness after follow-up tests, officials said Tuesday. The announcement was a relief to the U.S. beef industry, which is still trying to recover from the nation’s first case of the disease last December.

Initial screenings last week had raised the possibility of a new case of the disease in the United States. But a more definitive test at the National Veterinary Services Laboratories in Ames, Iowa, came back negative, the officials said.

Cattle futures trading ended Tuesday at 87.25 cents per pound on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, just slightly below the 87.32 cents per pound it was at the end of last Wednesday, the day before the latest mad cow scare. In between, it had dipped to nearly 84.2 cents per pound.

“We saw the market sell off and then stabilize,” said Bill O’Grady, director of futures research for A.G. Edwards & Sons, Inc. in St. Louis. “The market had sort of expected that the odds were high this would end up being a false positive.”

O’Grady and Gregg Doud, chief economist of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said beef prices also were affected by the heavy rains and snow in parts of Texas. Doud said it was hard to say how much the mad cow scare alone had influenced the markets.

“We’re already back to where we were,” said Doud.

After the initial screening, the Agriculture Department said it ran a “gold standard” test twice, on Monday and Tuesday. Officials did not say where the cow came from or why it was suspected of being diseased.

“Negative results from both … tests make us confident that the animal in question is indeed negative,” said John Clifford, deputy administrator of the department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

The initial screenings had produced what officials said were “inconclusive” results, but just the possibility of a second case had rattled cattle producers, meatpackers and hamburger chains.

Julie Quick, a USDA spokeswoman, said officials would provide no further information about the suspect cow since the test results came back negative.

It has been less than a year since the first case of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, was found in the United States. The disease attacks an animal’s nervous system, and food contaminated with BSE can afflict people with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare disease that is usually fatal.

Full Story…