Robert Pore's Ag Blog

In an official transcript of a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) news conference held Aug. 1, 2006 (Release No. 0277.06), Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said he hoped to convince Japan to start following international standards for mitigating the risks from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Japan recently announced it would again accept imports of U.S. beef, but only from cattle 20 months of age and younger. During the news conference, a reporter asked Johanns what he meant by international standards, and according to the transcript, Johanns replied:

“It’s not even based on 30 months anymore. It’s based upon a risk assessment, and it’s all specified in the OIE (World Organization for Animal Health) standards. And we can get somebody to walk you through that kind of chapter and verse, but again I think there's a tendency to say this is based upon 30 months. It actually is not anymore. The OIE standards now provide for kind of a risk-based approach, and that’s what we ask countries to comply with.”

R-CALF USA President Chuck Kiker said Johanns’ statement was incorrect.
“The 30-month age standard remains a key component throughout the OIE guidelines, for both risk mitigation and surveillance testing, and we are concerned that the Secretary’s misstatement will incorrectly inform the public that this important scientific standard has been abandoned, even after the OIE, in May, rejected USDA’s efforts to dispense with the 30-month standard.”

The OIE guidelines first recommended in 2005 that boneless beef derived from cattle 30 months of age or younger should not be subject to any BSE related restrictions, regardless of the BSE risk status of the exporting country.

During the development of the 2006 OIE guidelines, USDA proposed the removal of this 30-month restriction, but OIE member countries rejected the proposal. The 2006 OIE guidelines, published earlier this summer, retain the 30-month restriction.

Kiker said this was not the first time USDA has unsuccessfully lobbied the OIE to relax science-based BSE standards. He said in late 2003, USDA attempted to reduce the scientific OIE standard requiring BSE-affected countries to have an effectively enforced feed ban for at least eight years before they can be considered minimal BSE risk regions.

“The USDA actually tried to reduce the feed ban requirement to only five years,” Kiker said.
The OIE resisted USDA’s efforts and continues to maintain the science-based eight-year feed ban standard.

“The events that continue to unfold in Canada have substantiated the scientific basis for the OIE’s eight-year standard,” he said.

Kiker explained that this is not a matter of misinterpreting the OIE standards.
“The fact is that the OIE guidelines have continually used the 30-month age standard for the same purpose going back to 2003 – to require greater risk mitigation measures for cattle over 30 months of age that originate in countries where BSE exists,” Kiker said.

The OIE still lowers this 30-month age standard even further when the risk profile of an exporting country increases, just as the OIE has done since 2003.

The 2006 OIE guidelines use the 30-month standard for countries determined to be a “controlled BSE risk,” recommending the removal of the full range of specified risk materials (SRMs) in animals over 30 months of age and prohibiting these SRMs for use in human food, animal feed and fertilizer. For countries with a higher risk profile, the OIE lowers this 30-month standard down to 12 months, recommending the removal of these same SRMs in animals over 12 months of age and prohibiting their use in human food, animal feed and fertilizer.

The OIE uses the 30-month standard both to determine which SRMs are to be removed from animals younger than 30 months of age and which additional SRMs are to be removed from animals over 30 month of age. In addition, the OIE recommends that steps be taken to prevent meat from animals less than 30 months of age from being contaminated by the SRMs contained in the carcasses of animals less than 30 months of age, along with a recommendation to prevent contamination of meat from the broader range of SRMs contained in carcasses of animals over 30 months of age.

The OIE further recommends that mechanically separated meat from the skull and vertebral column in cattle over 30 months of age not be used for human food. As the risk profile of a country increases, all of these recommendations apply to animals over 12 months of age. The OIE’s 2006 surveillance standards also continue to use the 30-month standard as a basis for identifying subpopulations of cattle with increased risk for BSE.

“USDA needs to provide scientifically supported and factual information to the American public on a matter as important as protecting the U.S. from the introduction of BSE,” Kiker said. “The fact remains that animals in a BSE-affected country that are over 30 months of age have an inherently higher risk of being clinically infected with BSE than animals under 30 months of age, and this fact is well documented within the 2006 OIE guidelines.”