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Nation's expanded BSE
testing program slow to gear up
Industry nervous over USDA's decision to post all results online
By Roxana Hegeman
AP Farm Writer
WICHITA, Kan. (AP)--Early screening of high-risk cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy has found no suspected cases in the 2,871 tests taken during the expanded program's first two weeks.
But the U.S. Department of Agriculture's $70 million testing program has been slow to gear up to the point where it can screen 220,000 animals for BSE in the next 12 to 18 months.
The program, which started June 1, is meant to reassure domestic and international consumers that U.S. beef is safe to eat.
Most of the agency's 12 BSE testing laboratories nationwide, including the one at Kansas State University, still aren't operating. States such as Kansas have been bogged down in contract negotiations with rendering plants in the effort to get brain samples for testing.
"Technically, it started June 1, but we haven't received the OK from the USDA for our specific program and how we are going to run it. Until that gets approved, we are in a slowdown mode," said Kansas Animal Health Commissioner George Teagarden.
But the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said the infrastructure for the expanded testing program was in place June 1, and the agency is just now ironing out the remaining details.
"On the first day, it wasn't expected we would be performing at maximum output," said APHIS spokesman Jim Rogers.
Kansas--the nation's second-largest beef producer--last year tested 150 animals for BSE. It is supposed to test 7,000 animals under the expanded program, but the final figure is likely to be closer to 5,000 because livestock in the state's northern counties will go to Nebraska for testing, Teagarden said.
"There is no question in my mind we are doing as much as we can right now--and we will be doing more," Teagarden said.
Kevin Varner, the APHIS veterinarian in charge of the Kansas BSE-testing program, said 47 Kansas animals have been BSE-tested (most of them out of state) since the expanded program began.
Kansas and Nebraska, among other states, are having contract troubles with rendering companies, he said. To get the brain samples it needs to test, APHIS reimburses the companies for holding and identifying carcasses.
"They want more than we want to pay," Varner said. "We have taxpayer dollars we have to watch."
Most of the regional BSE testing laboratories approved to date are still not operating. A few have had equipment and contracting issues but all are expected to be on line within weeks, Rogers said.
The agency's own testing laboratory in Iowa is running, Rogers said, as are the new regional laboratories in Georgia, Washington, California, Colorado and Texas.
Kansas State University has one of the five laboratories approved May 11 by APHIS. Seven other labs were approved in March.
George Kennedy, director of the Kansas State's veterinary diagnostic laboratory, said it will be July before its BSE lab is running.
After some initial juggling to find a room, the university is now working to get the physical laboratory prepared--trying to get tables and electrical outlets for the computers, for example.
Meanwhile, the nation's meat industry is nervously watching the Agriculture Department's initial BSE testing results, which are posted on its APHIS website.
The department created an uproar in the cattle industry when it disclosed it planned to make public all the preliminary test results--including any BSE-positive results from the less accurate rapid tests before conducting more extensive and time-consuming tests on suspect samples.
"It is somewhat dangerous to do that, but it is also dangerous to keep that quiet. We know things leak out," Teagarden said. "I think an official announcement is better than a rumor. With this enhanced program there will be rumors if we are not very open."
APHIS last year tested 20,543 animals, most of them so-called downer cattle that could not stand or walk. After nation's first mad cow case in December, the agency doubled the number to 40,000. It later expanded the number to 220,000 high-risk animals in a move to reassure foreign governments.
Some 35 million cattle are slaughtered each year in the United States.
Date: 6/22/04
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