Thanks to a sharp-eyed vet who decided nonambulatory doesn’t automatically mean just old, the animal was put down, brain tissue samples taken and sent off to USDA, and the carcass buried. First a negative result, then a positive on the quick tests, so USDA invoked the Western blot that came back positive, later confirmed in Iowa by the immunohistochemistry test. “No material entered the food or feed chains,” as the stock USDA statement goes, and the epidemiological investigation continues. It will likely be tough to determine the birth farm as the animal had only been on the farm where it died for less than a year. And while USDA has found one offspring, others will be tougher to locate.
The markets quaked a bit and the public yawned as the media blew through the story in less than 24 hours. Speculation the Japanese would do something impolitic was blown off early on. After all, the day the Canadians announced their latest case, the Japanese announced their 22nd, and Japan did not shut off beef sales from Canada. And now that Japan has confirmed its first case of BSE in a beef producing animal instead of a dairy cow, the folks in Tokyo must be rethinking this whole highly politicized beef trade game, if only just a bit.
The new U.S. case is good news and bad news. The good news is that the BSE detection and mitigation system worked again, and the public’s trust in the feds and industry is strong. The bad news is USDA and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are now struggling in the face of mounting Capitol Hill criticism to get their respective and collective acts together so the federal BSE machine is humming as smoothly as it should.
USDA stepped in it by announcing within days of the positive declaration it would begin cutting back cattle testing, but wouldn’t say by how much or when the ramp down would begin. This effort is expensive, but several contend also well worth it as USDA plugs all the test data into the Harvard Risk Assessment model for a reconfiguration of the overall national BSE risk.
During House ag appropriations cross-examination in mid-March, Acting Undersecretary Chuck Lambert declared that after testing 652,000 animals, including 21,000 “otherwise healthy” cattle, the fact the United States has confirmed only three BSE cases “proves the point” the country has an extremely low risk of BSE. Administration critics weren’t buying, with Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), ranking member on the ag spending subcommittee, saying, “With no national animal ID system with traceback capabilities, no final rule on animal feed, it is clear now is not the time to decrease testing…”
USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, in partnership with the Food Safety and Inspection Service, is also wrestling with the long awaited rewrite of its entire library of BSE detection, mitigation, and control rules. It’s generally acknowledged the department wants to pull together its separate rulemakings on BSE into a single cohesive package, enshrining the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) recommendations for BSE minimal risk status in the program, including trade recommendations.
Then there’s the quest for a national animal identification (ID) program. Mired in questions of voluntary versus mandatory, premises versus individual animal ID, state versus federal, and single versus multiple information databases, the ultimate outcome of this program is anyone’s guess. In fairness, the department and the affected industries struggled with animal ID long before the “cow that stole Christmas” in 2003. But while the effort has been long on rhetoric, it’s been short on results, so it’s made itself fair game for critics.
And last but not least, should we expect a final BSE feed rule out of FDA? FDA Commissioner-designate Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach told House appropriators in March the rulemaking is targeted for completion by July 1, 2006. That’s a timeline designed to keep Capitol Hill calm and off the agency’s back. But many speculate that despite its much-trumpeted proposed rule last fall, FDA is counting on a reworked Harvard risk model and OIE recommendations to allow it to let the rule stay “proposed” unless or until there is an overwhelming need to finalize it.
This strategy may explain why there’s been very little word on how or if FDA and USDA will finally come to grips with the animal disposal question, especially if FDA finalizes its rule as written and essentially takes all deads and downers over 30 months old out of the feed chain unless brains and spinal cords are removed. If FDA doesn’t modify or simplify this section, then some renderers may make the tough decision to stop picking up on-farm deadstock since there’d be no economic incentive to do so. This scenario creates not only environmental problems, but also zoonotic disease issues, and not just for the feds, but also the states.
Political pressures may not permit FDA the luxury of standing on science and the statistical analysis of risk. The administration is struggling mightily with how – or if it’s even possible – to “harmonize” the FDA proposed feed ban changes with those proposed by Canada over a year ago. While there appeared to be some hope of harmonizing at least some components of the two nations’ rules, the fall of the Canadian government in December 2005, new elections and new ministers, and last month’s BSE case seem to have steeled Canadian resolve at this point to go with its incredibly complex and far-reaching BSE proposal, if only to demonstrate to world markets that Canada is serious about BSE mitigation and can’t be co-opted by the United States.
While USDA took flak from House appropriators over BSE mitigation, FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine Director Dr. Stephen Sundlof took heat from Senate appropriators who wanted to know if FDA was actively working to convince its Canadian counterpart to “weaken” the proposed Canadian feed rule to allow plate waste and poultry litter feeding. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) asked Sundlof why the United States is not following Canada’s lead in banning plate waste and poultry litter in ruminant feeds – “They’re eating chicken crap, okay?” said Harkin – and Sundlof, explaining that the risk of conveying BSE through plate waste and poultry litter is extremely low, said the two governments routinely confer, adding if Canada’s system has components that are better than the United States’, FDA would consider including them in its system.
The administration really has only two options if the Canadians decide to finalize their feed rule proposal as they originally proposed, including the long list of specified risk materials (SRMs) that would be banned from all feed. The first option is for the United States to go its own way, invoke the OIE, stand tough on its proposal, and declare that global science screams the draconian measures contemplated in the Canadian rule are unnecessary and more for show than substance. The other is to follow the Canadian lead to some minor degree, modifying the U.S. proposed rule to track more closely the Canadian proposal in the spirit of harmonizing the North American beef market.
But U.S. cattle producers, meat processors, renderers, and feed companies will come unhinged if FDA even contemplates going beyond the short list of SRMs proposed in its rule or leaves the deads/downers prohibition intact. The National Renderers Association is the only national group on record – having put its money where its mouth is to get the economic and scientific data – to show there’s no reason to change the current FDA feed rule in the first place.
View from Washington - April 2006 Render