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From: TSS ()
OUTLOOK 07: US Pins Hope Of Beef Trade On Safety Status WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--Despite the return of U.S. beef to some foreign markets after mad-cow disease was found in the U.S. three years ago, many borders remain closed, and the Bush administration is hoping an international beef safety status will shake loose remaining barriers. U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Trade Representative negotiators are counting on the weight of the approval of the World Organization for Animal Health, known commonly by the French acronym OIE, behind them come May. They are letting foreign governments know that after May they won’t just be turning away U.S. beef, they’ll be spurning international sanction. Ron DeHaven, administrator of USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview that the OIE offers third-party authority on what beef products can or cannot be traded safely when the producer country has found mad-cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, in its herds. “We want to have discussions based on the science and having a science-based OIE categorization of the U.S. bolsters significantly our position in having those discussions,“ DeHaven said. Selling Beef To China Those discussions will begin in earnest after the OIE rules in May on a U.S. status, but precursory talks have already begun with countries such as China in what some USDA officials have dubbed the “World Tour.“ U.S. beef is safe and you don’t have to take the U.S. government’s word for it. That’s the message delivered last week to China by USDA and USTR officials. China, considered to represent a vast potential for beef exports in the future as rising incomes boost consumption, has been especially vexing to the U.S. Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi promised in April that the country was ready to begin talks to resume imports of U.S. beef. That sparked U.S. optimism and over the following two months then-Undersecretary J.B. Penn traveled twice to Beijing. USDA chief veterinarian John Clifford visited once to impress upon the Chinese the safety of U.S. beef. Little consensus was reached between the USDA officials and their Chinese counterparts, but that didn’t stop the country from living up to what it believed was enough to meet Vice Premier Wu Yi’s promise. It was in late June that China unilaterally announced a trade deal to allow U.S. beef imports. The USDA, appalled at what it called unscientific restrictions, rejected the deal. The core of the problem in differences with China, USDA’s DeHaven said this week, is that you have two countries with two interpretations of beef safety. “We can talk science with them all day long,“ DeHaven said. “They sometimes interpret the science differently than we do and again I think that emphasizes the importance of this OIE categorization -- an independent third-party making a determination -- rather than us trying to tell the Chinese how they should interpret the science.“ There are some recent developments, though, showing new cooperation on agricultural trade between the two countries. The U.S. this week reassured China that it will soon be able to export processed chicken here – something China has been requesting for some time. Also this week, USDA Undersecretary for Food Safety Richard Raymond and Chinese Vice Minister Ge Zhirong signed an agreement not to punish U.S. exporters immediately for violations discovered in meat and poultry shipments. That may prove important to U.S. beef exporters worried about shipping beef to China if trade resumes. The OIE Deliberates All OIE determinations are guidelines and nothing is mandated for its 167 member countries, USDA spokesman Jim Rogers said, but the guidelines do carry significant weight. The World Trade Organization asks its members to follow OIE guidelines or put into writing why they don’t, Rogers said. The organization, on its Web site, says: “OIE standards are recognized by the World Trade Organization as reference international sanitary rules.“ So for the first time ever the U.S. is asking the OIE for official beef safety status in order to convince trading partners that the three U.S. BSE cases have no bearing on the safety of U.S. exports. An ad hoc committee convened by the OIE has already met to discuss the U.S. submission for BSE status - handed over for review in October - and the panel will likely meet again before making its recommendation to the standing Scientific Commission, DeHaven said. The Scientific Commission will in turn make its own recommendation to the full 167 member countries and a vote will be had in May at the annual OIE meeting. The OIE voted last year at its annual May meeting to simplify its country risk categories to “negligible,“ “controlled“ and “undetermined.“ “Negligible“ status is the best and reserved for countries considered to have the smallest risk of BSE -- a cattle disease that can be passed to humans through tainted meat -- but a “controlled“ designation would almost be just as good, DeHaven said. “Anything that we would want to trade internationally, we could pretty much trade as a ’controlled’ risk country,“ DeHaven said. “The difference between ’controlled’ and ’negligible’ is that the ’negligible’ risk country doesn’t have to have all of the safeguards in place that a ’controlled’ risk country would have.“ And the U.S. already has in place those BSE safeguards, such as a cattle surveillance program, a ban on feed materials that can transmit the disease and regulations prohibiting certain bovine materials from the food supply, DeHaven said. That doesn’t mean the U.S. would be just as happy with either designation. A “negligible“ status is preferred, DeHaven said, because it would make trade negotiations easier. But there is one complicating factor weighing against the U.S. OIE guidelines call for countries to be able to trace BSE-infected cattle to their origins and find. The U.S. generally has that ability, DeHaven said, but failed to find out where the last infected cow was from. Alabama was where the third case of BSE was discovered in the U.S. The discovery was made in March and government officials immediately began efforts to find out where the cow was born and likely infected, but gave up the search in early May. USDA officials said they believed the cow was at least 10 years old when it died, but had only been at the Alabama farm for about a year before its death. “The fact that we were not able to find the birth herd of the Alabama cow certainly doesn’t help our situation. On the other hand, it’s not to say that we don’t have the ability to trace animals.“ The USDA was able to determine the origin of other infected cattle as well as find some other birth cohorts -- cattle raised with the infected cow. “No country has been able to find every birth cohort of every positive cow,“ DeHaven said. Source: Bill Tomson Dow Jones Newswires 202-646-0088 bill.tomson@dowjones.com http://www.cattlenetwork.com/content.asp?contentid=91755 Greetings, > “We want to have discussions based on the science and having a science-based OIE categorization > of the U.S. bolsters significantly our position in having those discussions,“ DeHaven said. my God, how deep can this BSe get. Johanns, GW et al at USDA and the OIE's policy on the legal trading of all strains of TSE i.e. the BSE MRR policy has absolutely nothing to do with science and everything to do with commodities and futures. we cannot fire GW, but Johanns must go. they sold there soul (and ours) to the devil with this policy. it set back the eradication of BSE/TSE to the very beginning of when it was first documented in 1985. what it says is it's o.k. to feed other countries our strain of TSE and visa versa, but of course this had to wait until the USDA finally stumbled on there first documented case. there nothing more than a bunch of hypocrites. it's disgusting and sickening. the stench coming from Johanns et al at USDA is overwhelming. ONE FINAL THOUGHT ; OPINION http://www.efsa.eu.int/science/biohaz/biohaz_opinions/1540/biohaz_op_ej359_qra_vertebral_column_en1.pdf >>>New methodology, under the auspices of the OIE, is under construction within the EU and EFSA and the Panel recommended that once these classifications had been finalised they should harmonised with those used in the EFSA BSE QRA guidance document. The Panel anticipated that this harmonisation may have a knock-on impact on the QRA calculations, conclusions and recommendations and that, again, future Panel members should review this, and other, inputs of the QRA and address this impact using their “self-tasking mandate” option.<<< GOD HELP US! sample survey via oie for bse is about 400 test via 100 million cattle, if i am not mistaken. MOST countries that went by these OIE guidelines all eventually went down with BSE. ...TSS http://www.oie.int/downld/SC/2005/bse_2005.pdf THE OIE has now shown they are nothing more than a National Trading Brokerage for all strains of animal TSE. AS i said before, OIE should hang up there jock strap now, since it appears they will buckle every time a country makes some political hay about trade protocol, commodities and futures. IF they are not going to be science based, they should do everyone a favor and dissolve there organization. ... Page 95 of 98 8/3/2006 WHAT ABOUT RISK FACTORS TO HUMANS FROM ALL OTHER TSEs, WITH RELATIONS TO SRMs ??? a.. BSE OIE see full text ; http://p079.ezboard.com/fwolftracksproductionsfrm2.showMessage?topicID=470.topic IT'S as obvious as day and night, either Larry, Curley, and Mo have been at the helm of the USDA/APHIS/FSIS/FDA/CDC/NIH et al for many many years, or the incompetence of these agencies are so inept, either through ignorance and or just too overweight with industry reps., they then should be all done away with and a single agency brought forth, and if not, how will you correct this ongoing problem ? http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/Comments/2006-0011/2006-0011-1.pdf Johanns et al at USDA doing the TEXAS TWO STEP again. what's good for the goose, is NOT good for the gander i.e. bone chips ; TRANSCRIPT Release No. 0460.06 Transcript of Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns meeting with the Press Regarding beef trade with South Korea December 6, 2006 SEC. JOHANNS: I'm going to, we'll issue this statement, but I'll go ahead and read it just so we have it on tape here. This relates to South Korea's rejection of the third shipment of beef. I'm very disappointed in the decision by South Korea to reject all three U.S. beef shipments sent since South Korea leaders announced on September 11, '06, that their border is open to U.S. beef. The rejection of the third shipment clearly illustrates that South Korea officials are determined to find an excuse to reject all beef products from the United States. There is absolutely no food safety issue with any of these shipments. I find it difficult to accept that bone fragments the size of one-half of a grain of rice were found through visual inspection of 10 metric tons of beef as is South Korea's claim regarding the third shipment -- despite the fact that it went through unusually rigorous inspection by the U.S. exporter before it was shipped. ...SNIP...END USA DOES NOT LIKE BONE CHIPS EITHER, AS LATE AS 2006 TOO NOTE: Revisions of this Import Alert include modification of the alert title TYPE OF ALERT: DETENTION WITHOUT PHYSICAL EXAMINATION (Note: This import alert represents the Agency's current guidance to FDA field PRODUCT: Animal feeds and feed ingredients that may contain PRODUCT CODE: 69[][][][][] - medicated animal feeds PROBLEM: Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) Certain animal PAF: FIL PAC: 71R844 COUNTRY: See Attachment MANUFACTURERS/ CHARGE: *** "The article is subject to refusal of admission RECOMMENDING REASON FOR BSE is the bovine form of a group of uniformly fatal In support of the USDA/APHIS import prohibitions, the FDA To ensure compliance with Import Alert #99-25, the FDA has a GUIDANCE: *** Districts may detain without physical examination 1. Evidence that the firm has determined that the a. Results of the firm's investigation(s) into the b. Documentation showing corrective action(s). 1) a description of the current processes 2) verification that the processes are c. Documentation, based on current feed microscopy OR 2. Evidence that the product is the subject of a valid All requests for removal from DWPE should be forwarded Food And Drug Administration PRIORITIZATION FOI: No purging is required KEYWORDS: feeds, mammalian protein, animal, BSE, TSE PREPARED BY: Dave Krawetz, DIOP, (HFC-170) 301-594-3872 DATE LOADED Firms/Products on Detention without Physical Examination: CANADA (CA) Firm name and address: Product/product code: Reason: Agricore United Medicated animal feeds Muscle tissue Cereales D.L. Ltee Medicated animal feeds Blood, Bone Dawn Foods Products Medicated animal feeds Muscle tissue Excel Feeds Ltd. Medicated feeds Blood material, bovine Landmark Feeds Inc. Macintosh Beef Calf Grower Contains Masterfeeds Medicated animal feeds Blood material Oleet Processing Ltd Medicated feeds Mammalian muscle Ritchie Smith Feeds Inc. Medicated animal feeds Blood, muscle FIRM PRODUCT/PRODUCT CODE REASON TSM International Ltd. Rawhide Baseball Baseball covering Docket No. 03-080-1 -- USDA ISSUES PROPOSED RULE TO ALLOW LIVE ANIMAL Volume 12, Number 12–December 2006 On the Question of Sporadic or Atypical Bovine SpongiformEncephalopathy and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Paul Brown,* Lisa M. McShane,† Gianluigi Zanusso,‡ and Linda Detwiler§ Strategies to investigate the possible existence of sporadic bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) require systematic testing programs to identify cases in countries considered to have little or no risk for orally acquired disease, or to detect a stable occurrence of atypical cases in countries in which orally acquired disease is disappearing. To achieve 95% statistical confidence that the prevalence of sporadic BSE is no greater than 1 per million (i.e., the annual incidence of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease [CJD] in humans) would require negative tests in 3 million randomly selected older cattle. A link between BSE and sporadic CJD has been suggested on the basis of laboratory studies but is unsupported by epidemiologic observation. Such a link might yet be established by the discovery of a specific molecular marker or of particular combinations of trends over time of typical and atypical BSE and various subtypes of sporadic CJD, as their numbers are influenced by a continuation of current public health measures that exclude high-risk bovine tissues from the animal and human food chains. Whether humans might be more susceptible to atypical forms of BSE cannot be answered at this time. Experimentally transmitted BASE shows shorter incubation periods than BSE in at least 1 breed of cattle, bovinized transgenic mice, and Cynomolgus monkeys (12,13). In humanized transgenic mice, BASE transmitted, whereas typical BSE did not transmit (13). Paradoxically, the other major phenotype (H) showed an unusually long incubation period in bovinized transgenic mice (12). The limited experimental evidence bearing on a possible relationship between BSE and sporadic CJD is difficult to interpret. The original atypical BASE strain of BSE had a molecular protein signature very similar to that of 1 subtype (type 2 M/V) of sporadic CJD in humans (5). In another study, a strain of typical BSE injected into humanized mice encoding valine at codon 129 showed a glycopattern indistinguishable from the same subtype of sporadic CJD (15). In a third study, the glycopatterns of both the H and L strains of atypical BSE evidently did not resemble any of the known sporadic CJD subtypes (12). To these molecular biology observations can be added the epidemiologic data accumulated during the past 30 years. The hypothesis that at least some cases of apparently sporadic CJD are due to unrecognized BSE infections cannot be formally refuted, but if correct, we might expect by now to have some epidemiologic evidence linking BSE to at least 1 cluster of apparently sporadic cases of CJD. Although only a few clusters have been found (and still fewer published), every proposed cluster that has been investigated has failed to show any common exposure to bovines. For that matter, no common exposure has been shown to any environmental vehicles of infection, including the consumption of foodstuffs from bovine, ovine, and porcine sources, the 3 livestock species known to be susceptible to transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. Additional negative evidence comes from several large case-control studies in which no statistically significant dietary differences were observed between patients with sporadic CJD and controls (16,17). On the other hand, the difficulty of establishing a link between BSE and CJD may be compounded by our ignorance of the infectious parameters of a sporadic form of BSE (e.g., host range, tissue distribution of infectivity, route of transmission, minimum infectious dose for humans, whether single or multiple). Presumably, these parameters would resemble those of variant CJD; that is, high infectivity central nervous system and lymphoreticular tissues of an infected cow find their way into products consumed by humans. Transmissions that might have occurred in the past would be difficult to detect because meat products are generally not distributed in a way that results in detectable geographic clusters. Barring the discovery of a specific molecular signature (as in variant CJD), the most convincing clue to an association will come from the observation of trends over time of the incidence of typical and atypical BSE and of sporadic and variant CJD. With 4 diseases, each of which could have increasing, unchanging, or decreasing trends, there could be 81 (34) possible different combinations. However, it is highly likely that the trends for typical BSE and variant CJD will both decrease in parallel as feed bans continue to interrupt recycled contamination. The remaining combinations are thus reduced to 9 (32), and some of them could be highly informative. For example, if the incidence of atypical BSE declines in parallel with that of typical BSE, its candidacy as a sporadic form of disease would be eliminated (because sporadic disease would not be influenced by current measures to prevent oral infection). If, on the other hand, atypical BSE continues to occur as typical BSE disappears, this would be a strong indication that it is indeed sporadic, and if in addition at least 1 form of what is presently considered as sporadic CJD (such as the type 2 M/V subtype shown to have a Western blot signature like BASE) were to increase, this would suggest (although not prove) a causal relationship (Figure 5). Recognition of the different forms of BSE and CJD depends upon continuing systematic testing for both bovines and humans, but bovine testing will be vulnerable to heavy pressure from industry to dismantle the program as the commercial impact of declining BSE cases ceases to be an issue. Industry should be aware, however, of the implications of sporadic BSE. Its occurrence would necessitate the indefinite retention of all of the public health measures that exclude high-risk bovine tissues from the animal and human food chains, whereas its nonoccurrence would permit tissues that are now destroyed to be used as before, once orally acquired BSE has disappeared. SNIP... Models Qingzhong Kong, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Pathology, Case Western Reserve Bovine Amyloid Spongiform Encephalopathy (BASE) is an atypical BSE strain 6:30 Close of Day One There is a growing number of human CJD cases, and they were presented last He estimates that it may be up to 14 or 15 persons which display selectively MARCH 26, 2003 RE-Monitoring the occurrence of emerging forms of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the United States I lost my mother to hvCJD (Heidenhain Variant CJD). I would like to comment on the CDC's attempts to monitor the occurrence of emerging forms of CJD. Asante, Collinge et al [1] have reported that BSE transmission to the 129-methionine genotype can lead to an alternate phenotype that is indistinguishable from type 2 PrPSc, the commonest sporadic CJD. However, CJD and all human TSEs are not reportable nationally. CJD and all human TSEs must be made reportable in every state and internationally. I hope that the CDC does not continue to expect us to still believe that the 85%+ of all CJD cases which are sporadic are all spontaneous, without route/source. We have many TSEs in the USA in both animal and man. CWD in deer/elk is spreading rapidly and CWD does transmit to mink, ferret, cattle, and squirrel monkey by intracerebral inoculation. With the known incubation periods in other TSEs, oral transmission studies of CWD may take much longer. Every victim/family of CJD/TSEs should be asked about route and source of this agent. To prolong this will only spread the agent and needlessly expose others. In light of the findings of Asante and Collinge et al, there should be drastic measures to safeguard the medical and surgical arena from sporadic CJDs and all human TSEs. I only ponder how many sporadic CJDs in the USA are type 2 PrPSc? Singeltary, Sr et al. JAMA.2001; 285: 733-734. http://jama.ama-assn.org/ http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/Comments/03-025IFA/03-025IFA-2.pdf THE SEVEN SCIENTIST REPORT *** http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/02n0273/02n-0273-c000490-vol40.pdf SEROLOGICALS CORPORATION http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/02n0273/02n-0273-c000383-01-vol35.pdf Embassy of Japan Dockets Entered on December 22, 2005 03-025IFA 03-025IFA-6 Jason Frost [PDF] http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/Comments/03-025IF/03-025IF-589.pdf
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