010410 Consumer Groups Warn of Mad Cow Enforcement Gaps

Washington - Federal agencies are not doing enough to ensure that the fatal livestock sickness known as mad cow disease does not show up in American cattle and other domesticated animals, (self-styled) consumer watchdog groups told lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Groups told members of a Senate subcommittee that the US Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration and other federal agencies responsible for the safety of the nation's food supply can't inspect the vast majority of products that enter the United States from Europe. The result, they said, is that vigorous federal bans designed to protect US livestock and US consumers from the deadly brain wasting disease are weak.

``It's fine and well to have a ban, but it doesn't do much good if compliance rates are low and inspection rates aren't what they should be,'' said Dr. Peter Lurie, deputy director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group.

The disease, known formally as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), ravaged the European beef industry in the 1990s. More than 170,000 cases of BSE have been reported in Western European cattle since 1986, and the disease's human form, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, has been blamed for some 100 human deaths there.

Several federal agencies responded to the scare by banning imports of European meat and, in 1997, barring US ranchers from using the animal-based cattle feed believed to be the source of BSE's spread. Experts who testified before the committee credited the bans with preventing any cases of BSE from occurring in the United States.

But Lurie told the committee FDA data shows that 23% of US cattle renderers and 63% of FDA-licensed cattle feed mills have not been inspected to ensure that they are complying with federal safeguards. Also, ``the FDA only inspects about 1% of all (animal) materials that enter this country.''

``There is very little inspection done on all this food that comes back and forth across the border from all over the world,'' said subcommittee ranking member Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-SD)

A recent report from the General Accounting Office suggested that as few as 30% of companies in the cattle industry were in compliance with federal directives on BSE prevention.

Cattle ranchers and meat producers repeatedly stressed that no cases of BSE have ever been seen in the United States and that efforts to keep it out of the US cattle population and out of imported meat are working well.

``These efforts provide the best reasonable assurance that US cattle will remain BSE-free and that US consumers will not be exposed to any related health risks,'' said James H. Hodges, president of the American Meat Institute.

FDA officials maintained that their inspection schedule is rigorous and that companies under their jurisdiction are complaint with federal regulations and import bans. The agency had inspected 834 feed producers, renderers, dairy farms and other cattle businesses and re-inspected 184 initially found to be operating outside of federal BSE rules, said Stephen Sundlof, director of FDA's center for veterinary medicine.

``Only one firm continued to be out of compliance'' as of this week, he said.

Several recent scares about the health of US livestock have caused a new round of alarm over BSE. Federal inspectors in Vermont recently seized and killed two flocks of sheep imported from Belgium because of suspicion that the animals may have been exposed to contaminated feed. All of the sheep were found to be BSE-free.

Lawmakers have introduced several bills designed to strengthen protections against BSE. One bill, sponsored by Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-CO), calls for a formal federal task force dedicated to monitoring and preventing the disease in the United States. Another takes the extra step of banning all cow and sheep nerve tissue--the tissue believed to carry the highest risk for transmitting mad cow disease--from all human and animal food.

``While the risks (of BSE) may be low, we cannot be complacent,'' said Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL), the chair of the subcommittee.

RETURN TO HOME PAGE

E-mail: sflanagan@sprintmail.com