040119 Inspectors: Testing of U.S. Beef Is Inadequate

Washington - A U.S. Department of Agriculture food safety inspector said that the first reported incidence of mad cow disease in the U.S. food supply was inevitable, given loopholes in the inspection system.

"It wasn't a question of if this would happen, it was just when," said George J. Pauley III, who works for the Food Safety Inspection Service in New York and other Northeastern states, at a Washington news conference Thursday .

Pauley, who is also a union official, said that even if 2% to 3% of downers, cattle too sick or injured to walk, are being tested, as the USDA claims, "that may not be enough." Since the identification last month of a cow in Washington state infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, the Department of Agriculture has mandated that downer cattle be barred from the food supply.

Thursday 's news conference was held by the Government Accountability Project, a public interest law firm, and other watchdog and consumer groups. Inspectors at the conference said too few animals are tested. "Do I think 1% of animals [headed for slaughter] are being tested for BSE? No," said Trent Berhow, an inspector who lives and works in Denison, Iowa. Berhow, who gave an affidavit for the news conference, was reached later at his home. Berhow is also Midwest Council President of National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals. In the affidavit, he related stories from other inspectors afraid to be named. "I am afraid, too," he said. "But somebody's got to take a stand."

Pauley said he has been a meat inspector for more than 10 years but "to this day I have not received formal training" in testing for BSE. "After 'mad cow' in England we were asked to look at a video," he added.

Felicia Nestor, food safety project director for the Government Accountability Project, said at the conference that training for USDA employees who take samples seems to be "limited to a few initial demonstrations. ... They receive only a pair of tweezers and a teaspoon-like scooper" to use for testing brain material.

Inspectors charged that the beef industry has too much control of the process, often applying pressure on them to not send an animal to the vet in charge. "Are they interested in making people sick? Certainly not," Berhow said. "But their main motivation is money. They are interested in getting every ounce of flesh off an animal."

Gary Weber, executive director of regulatory affairs for the National Cattlesmens Beef Association, said that "The beef inspection system in the U.S. is the best in the world. Every single animal is inspected by veterinarians and trained professionals," though not all are tested for BSE. Weber and a spokeswoman for the National Meat Association said the testing level for BSE is more than 40 times that recommended by the International Office of Epizootics, a world standard-setting body on animal ailments.

The inspectors and coalition are asking that, at the least, all cattle older than 20 months, and all of unknown age, be tested because in early stages, BSE has no symptoms. Dr. Donald Berry, chairman of the biostatistics department at the University of Texas Cancer Research Center in Houston, has estimated that finding two positives for BSE in roughly 40,000 recent tests would suggest that there could be about 1,750 animals that would test postive in the 35 million slaughtered each year.

Source: Newsday

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