Lingering beef ban puzzles expert
U.S. panel member says delay 'surprising'

July 25, 2003

http://www.canada.com/edmonton/story.asp?id=A259C26F-85A1-4DDF-A4FF-44E347A4F754
 
Renata D'Aliesio 
The Edmonton Journal 
 
EDMONTON - The United States should have already started to lift its ban on Canadian beef and cattle, says the American expert who was part of an international panel reviewing Canada's mad cow investigation.

U.S. Agriculture Department officials have said for weeks they're considering reducing trade restrictions placed on Canada after its second case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was discovered two months ago.

Nothing has been announced, though, leaving Canadian ranchers and politicians to wonder when beef and cattle will begin moving across borders again.

William Hueston, who led the U.S.'s first BSE risk assessment and served on the United Kingdom's advisory committee, has been asking the same question.

"I'm surprised it has taken so long, because there are some steps on very low-risk materials that could be made," said Hueston, one of four experts on the international panel.

Hueston added: "It will be an incremental process. I don't think there will be a thunderclap, a parting of the waters and all of a sudden the border will be reopened to everything."

Hueston used to be the U.S. Agriculture Department's spokesman on BSE, and is now director of the Center for Animal Health and Food Safety at the University of Minnesota.

He, along with experts from Switzerland and New Zealand, recommended Canada make changes to its beef and cattle industry. The panel's report was made public June 26, but so far Ottawa has announced only one change: cattle tissues with a high risk of carrying BSE will be removed from the food chain.

The panel recommended that these tissues also be taken out of animal feed.

Some cattle industry representatives and university experts say Ottawa hasn't moved fast enough on changes. Hueston said speedier decisions aren't necessary, and he suspects the U.S. will adopt some of Canada's changes.

"Some countries have grandstanded and made broad claims that they simply were not able to implement," he said Thursday.

"All of us were strong in our comments ... to CFIA officials to say better to take realistic, pragmatic steps you can implement, than to make grandiose statements for political expediency that later have shown to be unrealistic."

This, he said, is the bind Japan is in.

Until 2001, Japan did almost no testing for BSE -- just 300 tests a year. Until 2001, it also imported feed from European countries with BSE, and had no ban on feeding rendered beef or bone meal to cattle, a practice prohibited in the United States and Canada in 1997.

When Japan found its first case of mad cow disease on Sept. 10, 2001, it downplayed the situation. By November, it had three confirmed BSE cases.

Japan responded with strict measures, including testing every cow slaughtered for human consumption. The measures go beyond what is scientifically necessary, said Hueston, and are affecting Tokyo's demands of the United States and Canada.

Japan, one of more than 30 countries banning Canadian beef and cattle exports, has threatened to shut its market to the United States if doesn't create a country-of-origin labelling system before resuming trade with Canada.

"They want to impose some of those measures on trading partners, as I understand it, and they feel a necessity to do that in order to justify the measures they've put in place," Hueston said.

"Let's base this on science. If animal products coming into the United States are safe based on the science and the international standards, then they should be safe to trade, regardless."

Hueston said Canadian beef muscle cuts, like steak, and live cattle younger than 30 months should be allowed to re-enter the U.S. market. He said embryos and semen are safe as well, but the U.S. should keep out high-risk cattle tissues and meat from older cattle.

Food containing processed beef and feed made from ruminants could be too risky, he said.

Hueston believes Canada's mad cow case should serve as a wake up call for the United States. "If people are complacent, it ought to shake them into the recognition that this could have been us, and we have got to be prepared to respond, should a case occur."

He said Canada's investigation, and the way it communicated its findings, should be held as a model for the world to follow.