DENVER, Colo. – It remains unclear when the United States will publish rules to permit imports of Canadian beef and cattle older than 30 months.
However, Canada’s fourth case of BSE will not stop the flow of younger cattle and beef, said John Clifford, chief veterinarian with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
“There will be no change to the current risk rule,” he told the Canada-U.S. issues working group that met on Feb. 2 during the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association annual meeting in Denver.
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Two rules are under discussion:
- One allows imports of beef and cattle older than 30 months. Clifford’s department is awaiting the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s final report on its investigation of the fourth BSE case reported Jan. 23.
- The other is an import rule that follows the World Animal Health Organization, or OIE, standards established last May. It outlines risk categories and the number of animals that must be tested in a three year period to determine prevalent levels of BSE in a population.
Howard Wetzel, director of the
USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service division, hopes the OIE will revise BSE rules regarding allowable disease risk levels. The current levels are negligible, controlled and undetermined risk.
The OIE also published a list of safe products that may be traded providing certain precautions are taken, such as a ban on feeding ruminant meat and bone meal and correct specified risk material removal. Wetzel wants to see more offal products added to the list and trade normalized with Canada because it affects U.S. business elsewhere.
“We would like to get to the point where we can bring meat and cattle over 30 months,” he said.
U.S. beef from cattle younger than 30 months recently returned to the principality of Macau, but it refused to open the door fully to all American beef products because of the U.S. stance on Canadian beef and cattle.
A major concern among American officials over the latest Canadian case is the effectiveness of the ban on feeding ruminant meat and bonemeal back to cattle.
Noel Murray of the CFIA said the feed investigation is ongoing.
The most recent case occurred in a Holstein-Hereford cross cow born in April 2000. It lived its entire life on an Alberta farm and may have received a calf starter ration at weaning.
Murray, who defended the Canadian situation at the NCBA meeting Feb. 2, said it is known from evidence in the United Kingdom that feed bans have not been perfect.
“The feed bans, although not perfect, reduced the growth of an epidemic.”
The U.K. feed ban reduced the incidence of disease by 73 percent in the first year.
“If the feed ban was not as effective as we think, we would have seen more cases (in Canada),” he said.
Two of Canada’s cases were born after the ban.
“These animals do not indicate the feed ban is failing,” Murray said.
Three of the four animals were discovered through on-farm testing. More than 85,000 head have been tested for BSE since 2003.
