Originally published June 19 2005
Ranchers say U.S. needs stricter safeguards against mad cow disease
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Many American ranchers are saying U.S. regulatory agencies should impose stricter tests for mad cow disease, but are reluctant to do so in the face of pressure from meat packing companies, Reuters reports.
The United States needs stricter safeguards against mad cow disease, but has not introduced them in part because of pressure from meatpackers to keep costs down, a U.S. ranchers group said on Monday.
Faced with a possible second U.S. case of BSE, some critics are calling for new measures such as stricter controls on livestock feed, mandatory testing of all high-risk cattle, and removal of high-risk tissues from younger animals than now required.
Bill Bullard, president of R-CALF USA, told Reuters the United States should take its lead from Europe, where mad cow disease or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) first emerged in the 1980s.
It devastated the beef industry, prompting governments to put austere testing regulations in place.
Late on Friday, the USDA said a suspect animal tested positive in a new kind of test, after being cleared of the disease in two other tests last November.
R-CALF contends it is not yet safe enough to allow imports from Canada, which has had a total of four BSE cases since mid-2003.
"We think they are having far too much influence on the BSE policies of USDA."
"If we thought that additional safeguards of any kind would be helpful or needed, we would be the first standing in line regardless of the cost to call for them," Hodges said.
The meat industry has a huge financial interest in ensuring that beef is safe to eat, he added.
For example, Europe bans the recycling of all types of animal carcasses into feed for other animals, whereas a 1997 U.S. regulation only bans the feeding of cattle products back to cattle.
The U.S. Meat Export Federation said America's BSE safeguards were in proportion to the size of the risk.
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