USDA tested 68 cattle for BSE after Texas mad cow
Posted on: Tuesday, 30 August 2005, 12:32 CDT
By Charles Abbott
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Investigators tested 68 cattle without finding any more cases of mad cow disease from the Texas farm that produced the first U.S.-born animal with the brain-wasting disease, federal records showed on Tuesday.
Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns scheduled a telephone news conference on Tuesday afternoon to release "final results" of the investigation, which also included an attempt to trace feed eaten by the infected beef cow, a 12-year-old Brahma crossbreed.
Also at the 1:30 p.m. EDT briefing will be the USDA's chief veterinarian and a senior official of the Food and Drug Administration, which conducted the livestock feed review.
The cream-colored cow was selected for testing when it was delivered dead to a pet food plant in Waco, Texas, last November 15. It initially was declared free of mad cow disease but a new round of tests in June, ordered by the USDA inspector general, found the cow had bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease.
It was the first U.S.-born cow found with BSE and the second U.S. case overall.
The first was in a Holstein dairy cow in Washington state in December 2003. That cow was imported from Canada.
Always fatal, BSE is believed to be spread among cattle through consumption of feed that contains material from infected cattle.
People can contract a human version of the disease by eating contaminated meats.
As a result of the contradictory results when the cow was tested, the USDA said it would use the so-called Western blot test as well as the immunohistochemistry test whenever the first-round rapid screening tests indicate that more BSE tests are needed.
According to documents posted on the USDA web site, the department used DNA testing to identify the carcass of the infected cow. Parts of the infected cow were stored with carcasses of four other animals that also were tested for mad cow.
As part of the investigation, USDA killed and tested for BSE some 67 head of cattle from the ranch where the infected cow spent her life.
The USDA also found and tested a "birth cohort" of the cow but it also was free of mad cow. That animal was located "off of the farm," according to the documents.
The USDA documents did not identify the farm where the infected cow lived. "Until it was culled from the herd, it had spent its entire life on the same farm," USDA said on July 1, based on its owner's statements.
Source: REUTERS
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