WASHINGTON, July 12, 2006 - The Food Safety and Inspection
Service (FSIS) today announced a technical meeting to
present and receive comments on an updated risk
assessment for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)
in the United States.
The technical meeting to discuss the updated model will
be held from 1 - 4 p.m. on Tuesday, July 25, 2006, in
the Jefferson Auditorium of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's
(USDA) South Building, 1400 Independence Avenue, SW.,
Washington, D.C., 20250. The agenda
will be posted prior to the meeting on FSIS' Web
site at http://www.fsis.usda.gov/news/meetings_&_events/
. Pre-registration is recommended for this meeting.
To pre-register, please contact Diane Jones at (202) 720-9692
or by e-mail at Diane.Jones@fsis.usda.gov
.
In April 1998, USDA entered into a cooperative agreement
with the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (HCRA) of the
Harvard School of Public Health and the Center for Computational
Epidemiology at Tuskegee University to conduct a comprehensive
investigation of the BSE risk in the United States. The
report, referred to as the Harvard Risk Assessment, was
completed in 2001, and was revised in 2003 after being
peer reviewed.
Both USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services'
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) implemented measures
to strengthen protections against BSE in the United States
immediately following the discovery of BSE in a cow in
Washington State on December 23, 2003. USDA then contracted
with the HCRA in May 2004 to revise the Harvard Risk Assessment
model to reflect information available through December
2003.
The updated risk assessment analyzes the effects of various
BSE risk mitigation scenarios. HCRA analyzed the effects
of the measures implemented by USDA and HHS-FDA and analyzed
recommendations made by an international expert BSE panel
that was convened to review the actions taken by the United
States in response to the BSE case in Washington State.
Comments on the notice for the updated Harvard Risk Assessment
may be submitted either through the Federal eRulemaking
Portal at www.regulations.gov
or electronically to FSIS.RegulationsComments@usda.gov
.
For further details pertaining to the updated risk assessment,
contact Dr. Chuanfa Guo, Senior Risk Analyst, Risk Assessment
Division, Office of Public Health Science, by phone at
(202) 690-0817. Persons requiring a sign language interpreter
or other special accommodations for the public meeting
should contact Ms. Jones.
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