Grand Forks Herald | By Jerry Hagstrom | January 26, 2004
Many House Agriculture Committee members, including Reps. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., and Gil Gutknecht, R-Minn., praised Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman's handling of the mad cow disease crisis at an oversight hearing Jan. 21, but House Agriculture Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and House Agriculture Committee ranking member Charles Stenholm, D-Texas, questioned the decision to ban all meat from nonambulatory or downer cows from the human food supply.
Both Goodlatte and Stenholm had opposed efforts in Congress to pass a law that would ban meat from downer animals in the food supply. Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., and Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, the same day re-introduced bills to codify the USDA ban. USDA imposed the ban Dec. 30 after a test showed a downer cow in Washington state had bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease. The cow was born and raised in Canada. Ackerman and Akaka said they are worried USDA could alter the ban at some point in the future.
Goodlatte said in an opening statement that USDA "was swift to respond" to the discovery of the single case of mad cow disease and that Veneman "has clearly made it a priority to keep the communications channels open." But he also noted that members have "resisted" efforts to bar the movement of nonambulatory in livestock commerce after "consultations" with USDA officials advised them it was better to keep such animals in the food production system so that they could be tested.
"If the secretary's current policy had been in place previously, we would not even have found this BSE-infected cow," Goodlatte said.
Under questioning, Veneman said USDA will test animals in a variety of settings, but has no particular plans to make sure that downer animals that previously would have gone into the food supply are tested.
Stenholm said USDA should continue to make its decisions on "sound science" and questioned whether banning meat from downer animals with physical injuries can be defended as sound science. Stenholm also said USDA has sent a notice to countries that export beef to the United States that they must follow the same standards regarding central nervous system tissue from meat and banning meat from downer animals when exporting to the United States. Stenholm said any regulations the United States adopts must be consistent with World Trade Organization rules and be based on science.
Veneman said she knew of no countries that objected to the new U.S. rules or that planned to challenge them in the WTO.
Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, Jerry Moran, R-Kan., Frank Lucas, R-Okla., Cal Dooley, D-Calif., Pomeroy and Gutknecht strongly defended Veneman's decisions. Gutknecht said that if there had been a question of "underreaction or overreaction, it was bettter to overreact."
Wayne Pacelle, a lobbyist with the Humane Society who has advocated the euthanization of downer cows, said Veneman "did an excellent job" in her testimony and that Goodlatte and Stenholm were only resisting what most of the meat industry already has accepted.
Pomeroy said he agreed with the steps USDA has taken, but "since the infected cow was from Canada, the logical response to strengthen consumer confidence would be to hold off on resuming imports of Canadian beef and redouble efforts to implement country-of-origin labeling."
Veneman said the Bush administration still believes that a two-year delay in implementation of the country-of-origin labeling provision in the 2002 farm bill.Grand Forks Herald:
