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kalikshama -> RE: Mad cow disease found in CA (4/25/2012 6:56:57 AM)
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quote:
The company does not yet know which farm the cow came from.
Last I know there was vigorous industry opposition to a tracking program. I see from the google previews that the shell of a program was scrapped in 2010, but the full articles are dead. The tracking program was withering on the vine when this article was written in 2007. I don't know how many of the practices are still current.
Mad-cow scrutiny is scaled way back
Originally published Thursday, February 22, 2007
Mad-cow disease
Dec. 23, 2003: A Yakima Valley dairy cow on its way to slaughter tests positive for mad-cow disease. The cow originally came from Canada, where the disease had been first confirmed in May.
Dec. 30, 2003: The U.S. Department of Agriculture bans "downer" cattle, those too sick or injured to walk, from the food supply.
Jan. 26, 2004: The Food and Drug Administration proposes banning feeding cow blood, chicken manure and food scraps to cattle.
June 1, 2004: USDA launches a program to test at least 220,000 animals for mad-cow over the next 12 to 18 months.
November 2004: USDA starts a voluntary pilot program to track and identify cattle in seven Western states.
May 2005: Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns says a mandatory, nationwide animal-tracking system will be in place by 2009.
June 24, 2005: Tests of a Texas beef cow confirm the second case of mad-cow disease in the U.S.
March 2006: The nation's third case of mad-cow disease is confirmed in a cow in Alabama.
April 2006: USDA says it will scale back mad-cow testing after determining the prevalence of the disease in the nation's cattle herd is "extraordinarily low."
Nov. 22, 2006: USDA reverses its plans and says the national animal-tracking program will be voluntary, not mandatory.
Jan. 4, 2007: USDA says it may lift a ban on the importation of older cows from Canada.
Last week: Canada reports its ninth mad-cow case.
While Washington ranchers are raising a fuss over Canadian cattle and the danger of mad-cow disease, the region's only mad-cow testing lab is quietly preparing to close March 1.
The lab at Washington State University in Pullman opened after the nation's first mad-cow case spurred a flurry of new safeguards against the fatal, brain-wasting disease.
But three years later, many of those measures are being dismantled. Others proposed after the infected dairy cow was discovered in Mabton, Yakima County, never materialized.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently scaled back mad-cow testing by more than 90 percent, leading to closure of the WSU lab and several others around the country. The agency has backed off plans for a mandatory animal-tracking system, which can help identify the source of an infection and other animals at risk, and now says the program will be voluntary.
Several of the unappetizing — and risky — practices that came to light in the wake of the initial mad-cow case are still allowed, including the use of cow blood as a food supplement for calves.
And even the prohibition on slaughtering sickly cows, called downers, for human consumption has not been made permanent, though it is being enforced.
"There have been some improvements, but USDA stopped short of implementing several important programs that are vital not only to protect against [mad-cow], but to protect the industry against other diseases," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a nonprofit consumer-advocacy group.
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