Canada could promote its beef as a specialty item, especially for the food safety conscious Japanese market, if it tested every beef animal for BSE.
A recently released study that evaluated the costs of voluntary testing and consumer perceptions of tested beef products found that some Japanese importers would buy more Canadian meat if it was tested.
“There is a sense out there that they are looking for a niche that they could really work into their system,” said Al Mussell of the George Morris Centre, which led the study, calledA Cost-Benefit Analysis of Voluntary BSE Testing of Cattle.
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The Alberta Prion Research Institute, PrioNet Canada and the Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency (ALMA) funded the study.
Testing slaughter cattle would cost $40 per head, but the study said costs could drop to $15 if a reliable live test was developed.
Researchers from around the world are working on a live BSE test, including some at the University of Calgary who are developing a DNA-based test with help from a $1.5 million grant from ALMA.
Japanese beef importers have struggled since BSE was discovered in the United States in late 2003. They were cut off from a reliable grain-fed beef supply and were forced to exchange it with product from Australia, New Zealand and South America.
As well, prices increased because acceptable beef was in short supply.
However, packers are resisting voluntary testing.
Most of them told the study that testing healthy animals, especially those younger than 30 months, has no scientific merit and could undermine Canada’s domestic and international credibility if done only for marketing purposes.
They also said BSE testing is not a commercial or trade issue between buyers and sellers but a market access issue between governments.
The study also said the benefit to public health would be nonexistent because slaughter animals tend to be younger than 22 months and current tests would not find any infection because of BSE’s long incubation period.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said in an e-mail it is aware of the report and is reviewing its findings.
Canada already has a comprehensive BSE surveillance program that is based on international scientific guidelines and recognized by trading partners, it added.
“The national BSE surveillance program is critical for maintaining domestic and international confidence in Canadian beef products,” said media relations spokesperson Sarah Mitchell.
“It continues to demonstrate the low level of BSE in Canada and our collective commitment to meeting international obligations.”
Mussell said the CFIA would still have to maintain control over the test kits to keep the process credible if private testing was allowed.
The debate over scientific merit comes down to giving customers what they want, he added.
“It is difficult to keep this whole discussion from getting real parochial, and whether something is science based is exactly that. We can acknowledge it is not science based, but it is something the customer wants.”
He said the CFIA might be more supportive if a large economic opportunity presented itself with little risk because other export programs are in place with little scientific basis, such as growth hormone free requirements from the European Union.
“The EU hormone free protocol is not science based and we have no problem with that,” he said.
“Let’s have some balance around this whole science discussion.”
The study also examined whether testing for export purposes would create a double standard for consumers in North America.
It concluded the program would be strictly a niche product for the Asian market.
Researchers did not focus on South Korea because Canada is involved in a trade dispute over market access.
“We suspect, particularly with regard to Korea, that the interest in this sort of thing is probably held in common among a range of countries,” Mussell said.
Testing would not eliminate the need for specified risk material removal, age verification and a ban on feeding potentially infected proteins back to cattle and sheep, he added.
“You have to have all those provisions in there to really make this work. They all support one another.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture controls testing in the United States and does not allow private testing.
Animals younger than 48 months are not tested in the United Kingdom, where the BSE epidemic was greatest.
Japan tests cattle older than 21 months.
CFIA BSE SURVEILLANCE RESULTS
•2007: 58,174 samples three positive cases
•2008: 48,808 samples four positive cases
•2009: 34,618 samples one positive
•2010: 35,655 samples one positive
•2011: 6,670 samples one positive
Source: Canadian Food Inspection Agency
