VENEMAN
ANNOUNCES EXPANDED BSE SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM
WASHINGTON,
March 15, 2004-Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman today announced details for
an expanded surveillance effort for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in
the United States.
On
Dec. 30, Veneman announced that an international scientific review panel would
review the U.S. Department of Agriculture's investigation into the BSE find in
Washington State and provide recommendations for future actions. Last
month, this panel, operating as a subcommittee of the Secretary's Advisory
Committee on Foreign Animal and Poultry Diseases, recommended a one-year
enhanced surveillance program targeting cattle from the populations considered
at highest risk for the disease, as well as a random sampling of animals from
the aged cattle population.
The
panel also complimented USDA on its investigative efforts as well as commented
that the removal of specified risk materials from the food supply was the single
most important action USDA took to protect public health.
USDA's
BSE surveillance program historically has been focused on the cattle populations
where it is most likely to be found, including those condemned at slaughter
because of signs of central nervous system disorders, non-ambulatory cattle and
those that die on farms. In FY 2004, USDA sampled 20,543 animals-a sample
size designed to detect the disease if it occurred in one animal per million
adult cattle with a 95 percent confidence level, which is 47 times the
international standard for low-risk countries.
Veneman
said that $70 million will be transferred from the USDA Commodity Credit
Corporation to fund the enhanced program with the goal to test as many cattle as
possible in the high-risk population as well as to test a sampling of the
normal, aged cattle population over a 12 to 18 month time frame.
The
enhanced surveillance plan incorporates recommendations from the international
scientific review panel and the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis; both have
reviewed and support the plan.
The
primary focus of USDA's enhanced surveillance effort will continue to be the
highest risk populations for the disease, but USDA will greatly increase the
number of target animals surveyed and will include a random sampling of
apparently normal, aged animals. USDA will build on previous cooperative
efforts with renderers and others to obtain samples from the targeted high-risk
populations, which are banned from the human food supply.
Under
the enhanced program, using statistically geographic modeling, sampling some
268,000 animals would allow for the detection of BSE at a rate of 1 positive in
10 million adult cattle with a 99 percent confidence level. In other words, the
enhanced program could detect BSE even if there were only five positive animals
in the entire country. Sampling some 201,000 animals would allow for the
detection of BSE at the same rate at a 95 percent confidence level.
The sampling of apparently normal animals will come from the 40 U.S. slaughter
plants that handle 86 percent of the aged cattle processed for human consumption
each year in the United States. The carcasses from these animals
will be held and not allowed to enter the human food chain until test results
show the samples are negative for BSE.
USDA will begin immediately to prepare for the increased testing, with the
anticipation that the program will be ready to be fully implemented June 1,
2004. In the meantime, BSE testing will continue at the current rate,
which is based on a plan to test 40,000 animals in FY 2004. Testing will
be conducted through USDA's National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames,
Iowa, and a network of laboratories around the country.
USDA
is also working to approve rapid tests for use in the testing program.
USDA will help defray costs incurred by industries participating in the
surveillance program for such items as transportation, disposal and storage, and
carcasses being tested.
Detailed
information on the surveillance plan can be found at www.usda.gov.
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