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Both Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns and Dr. Clark
Clifford, chief veterinary medical officer of USDA's Animal
and Plant Health Inspection Service leaped to reassure both
trading partners and the beef industry that the positive
bovine spongiform encephalopathy result announced Monday
should have little effect on international beef trade.
However, South Korea had announced prior to the result that
a positive test result would shut down the scheduled reopening
of its market early next month. Under the agreement reached
with the United States, Seoul reserved the right to close
its market again if any more cases of BSE were discovered
in the United States.
According to Asia Pulse , Lee Yang-ho of the Ministry of
Agriculture and Forestry said that in the event of a positive
result in the case, the entire agreement would have to be
renegotiated.
However, Lynn Heinze, spokesman for the U. S. Meat Export
Federation, said that while he was waiting for clarification
from his office in Seoul, it was understood that cases from
cattle born before the beef ban might arise. "It would only
be new cases that indicated a breakdown in the United States'
defenses against BSE" that would cause the market to be
closed," Heinze told Meatingplace.com .
Japan had previously stated that it expects more cases of
BSE in the United States, but it has been very slow to reopen
the market and will certainly have questions about this
case, which could further delay acceptance of U.S. exports.
The discovery of a small chunk of bone in a shipment from
Greeley, Colo.-based Swift & Company by Hong Kong authorities
(see Bone
discovery spurs Hong Kong to ban Swift beef ) might
also contribute to a go-slow attitude in Japan.
Response from political factions began quickly after Monday's
announcement. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., ranking member of the
House Appropriations Agriculture subcommittee, said that
the discovery of a new case of BSE means that USDA must
shelve plans to scale back its surveillance program, as
was originally planned when the program went into effect
in 2004. The program has so far tested over 600,000 high-risk
animals and 20,000 healthy-appearing ones.
Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch,
concurred, noting that the 2007 budget only provides for
40,000 tests, a fraction of the tests conducted in 2004
and 2005. She also suggests that the reporting system for
suspect animals be changed from voluntary to mandatory.
"We applaud the farmer who did the right thing by turning
over the sick cow in question to a veterinarian for testing,"
she said in a statement. "But this is still a voluntary
system that must be made mandatory for the sake of public
health."
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