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USDA should OK total testing
"Why would the secretary of agriculture want to stand in the way of boosting confidence in the food safety... This is the latest in a long line of bad decisions the secretary has made. Promoting our products is one of the main responsibilities of the agriculture secretary. Why would she want to stand in the way?"
--Kent Conrad (D-ND), senate Budget Committee
BISMARCK, N.D. (DTN)--Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman should take the advice of Nancy Landon Kassebaum Baker, the former Kansas Republican senator and now the wife of U.S. ambassador to Japan Howard Baker, and authorize Creekstone and other small meatpackers to test 100 percent of their cattle for BSE, Senate Budget Committee ranking member Kent Conrad, D-ND, and North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson told DTN.
Kassebaum Baker wrote Veneman on April 12 that she should reverse a decision that the government would not authorize Kansas meatpacker Creekstone to conduct the tests because it was not justified as a food safety method. Kassebaum Baker made it clear she was writing as a cow-calf producer from Kansas, not as the wife of a public official or speaking for the embassy. Creekstone released the letter to the news media.
Conrad and Johnson spoke to DTN about the USDA decision and the Kassebaum Baker letter after a press conference at which they announced that Marketplace, a North Dakota agriculture show that is held in January, would move back to Bismarck next year after three years in Grand Forks, N.D.
Conrad said, "Why would the secretary of agriculture want to stand in the way of boosting confidence in the food safety.
"This is the latest in a long line of bad decisions the secretary has made," he continued. "Promoting our products is one of the main responsibilities of the agriculture secretary. Why would she want to stand in the way?"
Johnson, who sits on a National Association of State Departments of Agriculture panel on mad cow disease, said he could not understand why the USDA came to the decision to reject the Creekstone petition. Johnson said that all the information NASDA had gotten "from back door channels" indicated that USDA was going to approve the tests. Johnson said the USDA decision not to allow "a private company" to conduct tests at its own expense "really caught me flat footed."
USDA should set minimum food safety standards, not maximum standards, Johnson said. He also noted that on another international trade conflict--the European Union's refusal to import beef that contains growth hormones--the USDA has not forbidden U.S. producers to raise cattle that are not fed growth hormones or to market them as hormone-free. Johnson also said he does not believe the USDA should interfere with a private company's willingness to test.
The testing question is one of many that the NASDA board is likely to discuss in Chicago at a meeting on May 2, Johnson said. NASDA currently has no policy on BSE because its members decided at their last meeting in February to delete the policy because they did not have time to make changes in it. Johnson said the NASDA Plant and Animal Industries Committe had appointed a subcommittee to come up with a new NASDA policy on BSE.
Johnson said he and some other commissioners were concerned that USDA made a mistake when concluding the investigation into the single case of mad cow disease in Washington state without examining Canadian cattle that had been imported into the United States at the same time as the cow that was found to have the disease. The cow that was found to have BSE was born and raised in Canada. Johnson said he hopes the increased testing announced by USDA will cover those cows that were imported from Canada during the same period.
Date: 4/20/04
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