USDA: Global beef supply safe from ‘mad cow’ disease

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said a recent case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) detected in an Alabama cow poses no risk to the food supply or human health in the United States or abroad.    The U.S. Department of Agriculture said a recent case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as “mad cow” disease, detected in an Alabama cow poses no risk to the food supply or human health in the United States or abroad.
   The 11-year-old cow never entered the slaughterhouse, and since it’s of the “atypical” variety, it is not contagious to other cattle or to those who consume the beef. It’s also the type of BSE that will generally show itself in cattle of eight years and older.
   So-called “classical” BSE is the form that occurred primarily in the United Kingdom beginning in the late 1980s, and it has been linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in people. The primary source of infection for classical BSE is feed contaminated with the infectious prion agent, such as meat-and-bone meal containing protein derived from rendered infected cattle. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1997 banned the practice of including mammalian protein in cattle feed.
   However, a case of classical BSE manifested in a Washington state cow imported from Canada in late December 2003, resulting in the shutdown of U.S. beef exports worldwide. Since then, it has taken the USDA years to reopen overseas markets to U.S. beef. This spring, China began allowing U.S. beef shipments back into its market.
   There have been four other cases of “atypical” BSE detected in the United States since 2003.
   The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) has recognized the United States as “negligible risk” for BSE, and this latest atypical case is not expected to lead to any trade impacts on U.S. beef. 
   “The United States has a longstanding system of interlocking safeguards against BSE that protects public and animal health in the United States, the most important of which is the removal of specified risk materials—or the parts of an animal that would contain BSE should an animal have the disease—from all animals presented for slaughter,” USDA said. 
   “The second safeguard is a strong feed ban that protects cattle from the disease. Another important component of our system—which led to this detection—is our ongoing BSE surveillance program that allows USDA to detect the disease if it exists at very low levels in the U.S. cattle population,” the department added.