A British veterinary laboratory on Thursday confirmed that the US has its first case of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the US Department of Agri-culture said.
Brain specimens from the suspect animal, from a meat packing firm in the northwestern state of Washington, tested positive for BSE at a USDA lab in Iowa.
But the USDA sent specimens to a veterinary lab in Britain for confirmation, since Britain has had far more experience with the disease.
PHOTO: AP
"The test samples were received at the laboratory in Weybridge, England, early Christmas morning," the USDA said in a statement.
"The UK veterinary pathologists concur with our interpretation of the Dec. 22 positive test conducted by USDA pathologists at the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa," it said.
The statement said USDA chief veterinarian Ron DeHaven "considers this concurrence to be confirmatory of our finding of a positive BSE case."
"The Weybridge lab will conduct a series of additional confirmatory tests," it said, "and we anticipate they will be consistent with the earlier findings."
The USDA scheduled a press briefing for 11:00am yesterday to elaborate on the test results.
Government officials promised Americans their holiday beef was safe, saying the mad cow case unearthed in Washington state posed a negligible health threat.
As of midday Thursday Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, and the UAE had all halted US beef imports.
US Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said authorities were doing all they could to protect consumers and that as the spinal cord and brain of the infected cow had not entered the food chain, the impact of the case should be isolated.
The US beef industry, hoping to avoid the fate of its European counterpart which was savaged by the disease, mobilized to stop further potential cases entering the food chain.
Meat processing firm Vern's Moses Lake Meats, of Moses Lake, Washington state, has recalled about 20 beef carcasses that may have been exposed to raw tissue containing BSE.
And the farm where the four-and-a-half-year old infected cow was kept before slaughter put its remaining 4,000 head of cattle in quarantine.
Activist groups called on Washington to impose tougher standards to ensure the safety of the food supply. Michael Hansen, with the advocacy group Consumers Union, said the US should adopt the same stringent testing as Europe and Japan.
Although 37 million cows were slaughtered here last year, only 20,000 were tested for mad cow disease, fewer than France tests each month. "For us to recover our export market, they are going to have to do more extensive testing," Hansen said.
Some lawmakers plan to introduce legislation to raise standards to detect mad cow disease. "When we sit down at the dinner table, we should know that what we are eating is as safe as we can make it," Senator Dick Durbin said.
The only previous outbreak of mad cow disease in North America was a single case at a farm in Alberta, Canada, in May.
Mad cow disease has been linked to a form of the fatal brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease that affects humans.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS