Release No. 0449.03
Alisa Harrison (202) 720-4623
Julie Quick (202) 720-4623
VENEMAN ANNOUNCES ADDITIONAL PROTECTION
MEASURES TO GUARD AGAINST BSE
WASHINGTON, Dec. 30, 2003-Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman today
announced additional safeguards to bolster the U.S. protection systems
against Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or BSE, and further protect public
health.
"For more than a decade, the United States has had in place an
aggressive surveillance, detection and response program for BSE," said
Veneman. "While we are confident that the United States has safeguards and
firewalls needed to protect public health, these additional actions will
further strengthen our protection systems."
Veneman said the policies announced today have been under consideration
for many months, especially since the finding of a case of BSE in Canada in
May 2003. The policies will further strengthen protections against BSE by
removing certain animals and specified risk material and tissues from the
human food chain; requiring additional process controls for establishments
using advanced meat recovery (AMR); holding meat from cattle that have been
tested for BSE until the test has confirmed negative; and prohibiting the
air-injection stunning of cattle.
While many cattle in the United States can be identified through a
variety of systems, the Secretary also announced that USDA will begin
immediate implementation of a verifiable system of national animal
identification. The development of such a system has been underway for more
than a year and a half to achieve uniformity, consistency and efficiency
across this national system.
"USDA has worked with partners at the federal and state levels and in
industry for the past year and a half on the adoption of standards for a
verifiable nationwide animal identification system to help enhance the speed
and accuracy of our response to disease outbreaks across many different
animal species," Veneman said. "I have asked USDA's Chief Information
Officer to expedite the development of the technology architecture to
implement this system a top priority.
"These are initial steps that USDA will take to enhance our protection
system," Veneman said. "I am appointing an international panel of scientific
experts to provide an objective review of our response actions and identify
areas for potential additional enhancements."
Specifically, USDA will take the following actions:
Downer Animals. Effectively immediately, USDA will ban all downer cattle
from the human food chain. USDA will continue its BSE surveillance program.
Product Holding. USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service inspectors will no
longer mark cattle tested for BSE as "inspected and passed" until
confirmation is received that the animals have, in fact, tested negative for
BSE. This new policy will be in the form of an interpretive rule that will
be published in the Federal Register.
To prevent the entry into commerce of meat and meat food products that
are adulterated, FSIS inspection program personnel perform ante- and
post-mortem inspection of cattle that are slaughtered in the United States.
As part of the ante-mortem inspection, FSIS personnel look for signs of
disease, including signs of central nervous system impairment. Animals
showing signs of systemic disease, including those exhibiting signs of
neurologic impairment, are condemned. Meat from all condemned animals has
never been permitted for use as human food.
Specified Risk Material. Effective immediately upon publication in the
Federal Register, USDA will enhance its regulations by declaring as
specified risk materials skull, brain, trigeminal ganglia, eyes, vertebral
column, spinal cord and dorsal root ganglia of cattle over 30 months of age
and the small intestine of cattle of all ages, thus prohibiting their use in
the human food supply. Tonsils from all cattle are already considered
inedible and therefore do not enter the food supply. These enhancements are
consistent with the actions taken by Canada after the discovery of BSE in
May.
In an interim final rule, FSIS will require federally inspected
establishments that slaughter cattle to develop, implement, and maintain
procedures to remove, segregate, and dispose of these specified risk
materials so that they cannot possibly enter the food chain. Plants must
also make that information readily available for review by FSIS inspection
personnel. FSIS has also developed procedures for verifying the approximate
age of cattle that are slaughtered in official establishments. State
inspected plants must have equivalent procedures in place.
Advanced Meat Recovery. AMR is an industrial technology that removes
muscle tissue from the bone of beef carcasses under high pressure without
incorporating bone material when operated properly. AMR product can be
labeled as "meat." FSIS has previously had regulations in place that
prohibit spinal cord from being included in products labeled as "meat." The
regulation, effective upon publication in the Federal Register, expands that
prohibition to include dorsal root ganglia, clusters of nerve cells
connected to the spinal cord along the vertebrae column, in addition to
spinal cord tissue. Like spinal cord, the dorsal root ganglia may also
contain BSE infectivity if the animal is infected. In addition, because the
vertebral column and skull in cattle 30 months and older will be considered
inedible, it cannot be used for AMR.
In March 2003, FSIS began a routine regulatory sampling program for beef
produced from AMR systems to ensure that spinal cord tissue is not present
in this product. In a new interim final rule announced today, establishments
have to ensure process control through verification testing to ensure that
neither spinal cord nor dorsal root ganglia is present in the product.
Air-Injection Stunning. To ensure that portions of the brain are not
dislocated into the tissues of the carcass as a consequence of humanely
stunning cattle during the slaughter process, FSIS is issuing a regulation
to ban the practice of air-injection stunning.
Mechanically Separated Meat. USDA will prohibit use of mechanically
separated meat in human food.
On Dec. 23, Veneman reported that a cow in Washington State has tested
positive for BSE. A swift and comprehensive investigation is ongoing to
trace the animal to a herd of origin, which is believed to be located in
Alberta, Canada, as well as track additional animals that have entered the
United States. (For the latest update on the investigation, visit
www.usda.gov.)
For more than a decade, the United States has had in place an aggressive
surveillance, detection and response program for BSE. The United States has
tested over 20,000 head of cattle for BSE in each of the past two years, 47
times the recommended international standard.
Since 1989, USDA has banned imports of live ruminants and most ruminant
products from the United Kingdom and other countries having BSE.
In 1997, the FDA prohibited the use of most mammalian protein, the main
pathway to spread the disease should it be in the United States, in the
manufacture of animal feed intended for cattle and other ruminants.
An independent analysis by Harvard in 2001 and again in 2003 shows that
the risk of BSE spreading in the United States is low and any possible
spread would have been reversed by the controls we have already put in
place.
For more information please visit www.usda.gov.
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