Possible third case of mad cow probed

By Charles Abbott and Christopher Doering

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Department of Agriculture is
investigating a possible third U.S. case of mad cow disease,
officials said on Saturday, in a possible setback after months
of work to reopen beef trade with Japan and South Korea.

Results from two definitive tests on the dead cow will be
available in four to seven days. The suspect animal was found
when a brain sample yielded an “inconclusive” result in a
less-accurate rapid-screening test.

John Clifford, the USDA’s chief veterinarian, said there
was no risk to public health as the carcass did not enter the
food chain. The department did not say where the suspect animal
was found or provide other details.

American consumers generally have shrugged off the disease,
always fatal in cattle, since it was first discovered in the
United States in December 2003. Per capita consumption of beef
has climbed since then and is forecast at 66.9 pounds in 2006.

Japan and South Korea, traditionally two major export
customers, have been slow to resume trade despite U.S.
assurances that its beef is safe. Japan banned U.S. beef for
two years, reopened trade for one month and then suspended it
on January 20 when inspectors found forbidden spinal material
in a shipment of veal.

If the United States has a new case of mad cow, it will be
more difficult to convince Japan to lift its ban, said Jim
Robb, economist at the Livestock Marketing Information Center
in Denver, Colorado.

South Korea was scheduled to reopen its borders to U.S.
beef in April for the first time since December 2003, when the
first U.S. case was reported in a dairy cow in Washington
state.

Clifford said the latest suspect animal was tested as part
of a stepped-up USDA program that targets older cattle or those
with possible symptoms of mad cow disease. More than 640,000
cattle have been tested through the program since June 2004.

“This inconclusive result does not mean we have found a new
case of BSE,” Clifford said in a statement, referring to bovine
spongiform encephalopathy, the formal name of the disease.

The two major U.S. safeguards against mad cow disease are a
1997 ban on using cattle parts in cattle feed and a requirement
for meatpackers to remove from older cattle the brains, spinal
cords and other nervous tissue most at risk of carrying the
infective agent.

“If it (the suspect animal) was born after the feed ban in
the United States, it is a bigger problem,” said Robb. “Because
it would be harder to say our system is working well.”

It is believed that humans can contract a similar fatal
brain disease by eating contaminated parts from infected
cattle. More than 140 people in Britain and Europe have died
from the human variation of mad cow disease.

(Additional reporting by Bob Burgdorfer in Chicago and
Chris Baltimore in Washington)