Mad Cow Facts

By Joseph Coleman
Associated Press
December 26, 2005

Excerpt…

The California red was served, the oysters on the half-shell consumed. Finally, Bumpei Kawanaka had what he really wanted on his fork: a glistening red slice of American steak.

“It’s very juicy and, of course, tasty,” says Kawanaka, who became one of the first people in Japan to savor U.S. beef since the country eased an import ban. “It’s a special taste.”

American beef made a small but significant appearance on grills in Japan Dec. 19, signaling what U.S. producers hope will be a triumphant return to what once was their most lucrative overseas market.

The feasts - at a private party in Tokyo and a chain of barbecue restaurants in western Japan - followed limited meat shipments in recent days allowed by Japan’s Dec. 12 decision to partially lift its embargo.

Japan shut its doors to American beef imports in December 2003 after the first U.S. case of mad cow disease, depriving producers of a $1.4 billion market - and consumers of a favorite meal.

Tasting the beef

The private banquet in Tokyo attended by Kawanaka was hosted by Nebraska, which held a good chunk of the market before the ban. U.S. officials praised the lifting of the embargo - and then lifted some ribeye to their lips.

“We are so happy … to have you as the first people to taste the beef which we all know is delicious, safe and affordable,” Dan Berman, minister-counselor for agricultural affairs at the U.S. Embassy, told some 30 guests before slicing into a steak.

At the same time in western Japan, the wider public got its first mouthfuls at the Zenshoku Korean barbecue chain.

American beef was on the menu in 30 restaurants in that region Dec. 19 and returned to 26 outlets in Tokyo and other parts of eastern Japan Dec. 20.

Despite the celebrations, it is expected to be weeks or even months before Japanese shoppers at supermarkets or diners at popular and cheap beef-and-rice bowl outlets savor their first tastes of U.S. beef.

Yoshinoya, a favorite beef bowl chain, also is concerned that remaining restrictions on U.S. imports will limit beef’s availability. Japan has agreed to only import beef from U.S. cows 20 months or younger - a small percentage of the U.S. herd…

…Japan shut its ports to U.S. beef on Dec. 24, 2003, after the discovery of the first case of mad cow disease - formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy - in the U.S. herd.

At first, Tokyo demanded that Washington test each head of cattle as it goes to slaughter as Japan has done to contain its own mad cow spread, but U.S. producers balked, saying that was too costly and unnecessary.

After months of negotiation, the two sides agreed to allow the importation of meat from younger cows, which so far have been free of the disease. Japan’s Food Safety Commission recently approved that decision.

U.S. beef still faces an uphill struggle in Japan, where consumers are particularly sensitive to safety concerns. Some restaurants are reluctant to market American meat until they are sure the public will be receptive.

Greg Ibach, director of the Nebraska Department of Agriculture, hit hard on those doubts in a toast Dec. 19, assuring diners that producers were willing to go all out to win back Japanese palates.

After all, big money is at stake: Nebraska beef sales were $150 million to $300 million a year in Japan before the ban.

“Over the past two years, our producers … have embraced evolving international standards to maintain our reputation,” Ibach says.

By LIBBY QUAID, AP Food and Farm Writer
Associated Press Financial Wire
December 21, 2005

Excerpt…

WASHINGTON – The beef industry is finally recovering from the discovery of mad cow disease in the United States two years ago and can expect a growing number of foreign customers, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said Wednesday.

A major trading partner, South Korea, may soon end its embargo on U.S. beef, Johanns said. Japan lifted its ban last week, reopening a market that had been the most lucrative for U.S. cattle producers and meat processors.

“Certainly the pattern now is in the right direction, with Japan’s decision. We’ve restored the vast percentage of trade in beef,” Johanns said in an interview with The Associated Press.

At the same time, officials anticipate scaling back the higher level of testing for mad cow disease. Officials had increased testing from about 55 to 1,000 daily after the first case of mad cow disease two years ago,

“It was not a food safety initiative at all _ it was an attempt to get an idea of the condition of our herd,” Johanns told the AP.

Authorities have now tested 556,143 animals and turned up a second case in a Texas-born cow in June. The number tested is about 1 percent of the 45 million adult cows in the United States.

Originally intended to last until this month, the expanded testing won’t be scaled back today or tomorrow, Johanns said.

“But certainly sometime after the first of the year, we’ll really start to engage in what that future testing regimen should be like,” he said.

Johanns, a former Nebraska governor, ended the year on a high note. When he took office on Jan. 21, ending a Japanese embargo on U.S. beef was Johanns’ top priority. The first American shipments of beef arrived last week in Japan, which was worth $1.4 billion to the U.S. industry in 2003.

South Korea, worth about $815 million in 2003, appears close to ending its embargo…

…Johanns said the swift resumption of shipments to Japan makes a strong case for the department’s plan to have a nationwide system of tracking livestock movements.

Officials want the ability to pinpoint the movements of cows, chickens and pigs within 48 hours and have said they would let the industry run the animal identification program.

“Those that are able to trace and verify and identify their animals were able to get into the Japan market overnight,” Johanns said.

Trade issues will dominate Johanns’ agenda in the coming year. The secretary returned Monday from World Trade Organization talks in Hong Kong, where agriculture played a central role. There was no agreement on a broad framework for reducing subsidies, but Johanns said there is still plenty of time in 2006 to reach a global deal.

In the meantime, Congress will be preparing to write a new farm bill, which provides for the subsidies at issue in the trade talks. The department held 52 forums nationwide on the farm bill _ 22 by Johanns himself _ and will use the input from farmers to assemble ideas for the legislation.

“Anyone who ignores trade is jeopardizing 27 percent of the receipts for farmers and ranchers,” Johanns said. “So the WTO process is definitely something we pay attention to.”

Johanns also said the government needs billions of dollars from Congress to better prepare for the possibility of a bird flu outbreak. The is considering $3.8 billion for bird flu preparedness in a defense bill passed by the House early Monday; agriculture plays a small but crucial role in protecting poultry flocks, and Johanns’ agency would get nearly $100 million of the money.

The Agriculture Department already is conducting surveillance and has a vaccination program. But that is “probably not to the extent we could do, that’s for sure, with the additional funding,” Johanns said.

___

On the Net:

Agriculture Department: http://www.usda.gov

Libby Quaid, Associated Press Writer
November 21, 2005
Grand Forks Herald (North Dakota)

Excerpt…

The government plans to maintain its escalated level of testing for mad cow disease, extending a timetable that would have slowed the search for infection significantly.

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 says. “It’s safe to say the enhanced surveillance is going to extend beyond the end of December.”

Johanns says his decision is not about Japan, which bought more American beef than any foreign customer until the United States discovered its first case of mad cow disease. Johanns says he wants to ensure that testing represents all regions of the country, and healthy animals are tested.

Still, critics of the department say higher testing levels are needed to reassure Japan and other trading partners.

“I’ve said time and time again: There is little risk of BSE in U.S. beef, but it is obvious that we have not yet convinced key trading partners of that,” says Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, senior Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Under pressure

Harkin and other lawmakers have been pressuring the department to do at least 20,000 more tests on cows that are healthy.

The government has been testing only sick, injured or dead cows, those deemed to be at “high risk” of having mad cow disease. High risk means animals showing signs of mad cow disease, such as nervous system problems or emaciation, downer animals that can’t walk or dead animals.

Tests are done on brain tissue from cows, so animals must be killed before they can be tested. No test has been devised to confirm the disease in a living animal.

Johanns’ predecessor, Ann Veneman, promised to test healthy animals based on recommendations from a panel of international experts on mad cow disease. Johanns says he recently reread Veneman’s comments on testing healthy animals in transcripts from a congressional hearing…

Safeguards

The nation’s first case of mad cow disease was confirmed in December 2003 in a Canadian-born cow in Washington state. In response, the Agriculture Department increased its testing in June 2004 from an average of about 55 daily to more than 1,000 a day.

Authorities have tested 516,496 animals and turned up a second case in a Texas-born cow that tested positive in June. The number of cows tested is about 1 percent of the 45 million adult cows in the United States.

As part of its campaign to guard against the spread of mad cow disease, the government also inspects processing and rendering plants and tests animal feed. The only way mad cow disease is known to spread is through feed containing certain tissue from infected cows. Adding animal protein to feed was a common practice to speed growth until the United States banned it in 1997.

By LIBBY QUAID, AP Food and Farm Writer
November 16, 2005
Associated Press

Excerpt…

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration hopes to lift remaining mad cow disease-related restrictions on Canadian cattle within the next year, the Agriculture Department said Wednesday.

The restrictions, in place since Canada discovered its first case of the disease in 2003, were eased earlier this year to allow younger cattle to enter the United States.

A prohibition has remained on Canadian animals older than 30 months; levels of infection from mad cow disease are thought to increase with age.

Government and industry officials argue that rules for how cattle are slaughtered would keep the disease from ever entering the human or animal food supply.

“At the end of the day, the risk occurs when that animal is slaughtered,” said Ron DeHaven, administrator of the department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

“We have all of the safeguards in place to ensure the safety of the animal and the products that might be derived from that animal,” DeHaven said.

The department is considering a new rule that would lift the remaining restrictions on Canadian beef, DeHaven said. He said if a risk analysis finds it is feasible, the rule could be proposed in six to eight months. A public comment period would follow.

One restriction would remain, DeHaven said: Animals born before Canada had an effective ban on cattle protein in cattle feed would not be allowed to enter the U.S…

…When the U.S. proposed to ease the Canadian ban in December 2004, the plan was to allow younger animals as well as meat from older animals. However, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns decided in February to keep the existing ban on beef from older cattle.

At that point, he told the department to start looking at whether beef from older animals, as well as the animals themselves, should be allowed inside the United States.

Since discovering its first case in May 2003, Canada has turned up two more cases. Two more cases turned up in the United States, one in a cow that was imported from Canada and one in a Texas-born cow.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Canada had shipped 364,757 cattle into the United States since live cattle imports resumed in July. Overall, the U.S. has an estimated 95 million cattle, 45 million of them adults.

Older animals typically accounted for about one-quarter of Canada’s cattle shipments, according to Canadian industry estimates.

Mad cow disease is the common name for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. Eating meat products contaminated with infected tissue is linked to a rare, fatal illness, variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, that has killed more than 150 people worldwide, most of them in Britain, where there was an outbreak in the 1980s and 1990s.

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On the Net:

Agriculture Department: http://www.usda.gov

By MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press Writer
October 31, 2005
The Associated Press

Excerpt…

TOKYO — Japan took a step toward resuming imports of American beef Monday when a government panel ruled the risk of mad cow infection in U.S. beef is extremely low if proper precautions are taken.

The panel forwarded its report to the full Food Safety Commission, which is expected to consider it on Wednesday.

Japan banned U.S. beef in December 2003 after the discovery of the first U.S. case of the bovine illness. At the time, 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 Bush to impose tariffs on Japan if it does not lift the ban.

“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 a 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…

…Approval by the Food Safety Commission will not automatically lift the ban, however. First, the health and agriculture ministries will hold a month of public hearings on beef safety before the government will make a decision.

Japan has tested every domestic cow for the disease since its first case in 2002, and initially demanded that the United States do the same. Japan has found 20 domestic cases of the disease so far.

U.S. authorities, however, balked at the cost of testing the huge American herd and argued that it was not scientifically necessary.

Low-cost beef-and-rice restaurants in Japan have pushed for a lifting of the ban, but finicky Japanese consumers remain deeply wary of American beef, with recent polls showing that nearly 70 percent opposed lifting the ban.