010203 White House Says Mad Cow “Important” Safety Issue

Washington - Prevention of the deadly mad cow disease in the United States is an “important” food safety issue for the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Agriculture Department, the Bush administration said.

The recent quarantine of some 1,200 Texas cattle which may have been exposed to the brain-wasting disease through animal feed has raised questions about the adequacy of U.S. food safety regulations and preventive measures, even though no case of mad cow disease has ever been found in the United States.

“Food safety is always an important issue. And as you're aware, there has been some developments on that front, and I would refer you to the Department of Agriculture and the FDA for more of the details on how the government is proceeding,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

“It is always something that government needs to concern itself with,” he added.

Fleischer did not elaborate on what additional steps, if any, the federal government was taking to prevent the disease known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

FDA and USDA officials met with livestock industry representatives to discuss mad cow. After the meeting, industry officials said they believed existing U.S. regulations were strong enough, and promised not to feed their cattle on the remains of livestock.

Mad cow disease is believed to have started in Britain and spread across Europe in part because contaminated cattle were destroyed, ground up and recycled into animal feed. The European Union has tightened its regulations to contain the outbreak, which has sent consumer demand for beef plunging and created millions of pounds of destroyed animals for disposal.

The United States has not imported any meat or bone meal from Britain for a decade, and in 1997 banned feeding cattle remains from any nation to American farm animals.

U.S. cattle futures and live animals fell sharply in trading Tuesday on fears that publicity about the European outbreak might slow beef consumption in the United States. Traders were also rattled by news that a New York store was selling a German candy that was apparently recalled in Poland because of fears it was made with a beef-based gelatin from cows suspected of mad cow infection.

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