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Consumers Union Wants Better Mad Cow Testing

June 14, 2005
Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, is urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture to adopt the Western blot test in addition to its current testing methods to determine if a suspected animal has mad cow disease.

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In light of the positive Western blot test on an animal originally testing negative in November, Consumers Union said it is urging USDA to immediately send brain tissue to a laboratory in England for independent confirmation. The organization is also urging USDA to rapidly complete the process of tracing the origins of the animal, as well as other animals in the herd.

"We have been urging the USDA since February to retest the November suspect animal using the more sensitive Western blot test, and we commend USDA for taking this extra step to protect the safety of America's beef," stated Michael Hansen, Ph.D., a biologist and a spokesman for Consumers Union's http://www.NotInMyFood.org project.

"USDA now needs to complete its assessment by utilizing the expertise of the experts in the UK." Although USDA said last Friday that it would send brain tissue to the UK Weybridge laboratory, so far it has not done so.

Hansen maintains that the Western blot test, which concentrates the brain sample, can detect mad cow disease in an animal at an earlier stage of infection. He said it is used in virtually all European countries and Japan, in addition to or sometimes instead of, the IHC test routinely employed by USDA.

"We are not aware of any reports of false positives on the Western blot test in the scientific literature, assuming it has been conducted properly," Hansen said. "USDA needs to get on with the task of tracing this animal back to its origins, and should test other animals than may have shared its rations."

Consumers Union also urges USDA to test all cattle at slaughter that are over 20 months old. Current test technology cannot detect the disease in animals younger than 20 months.

What To Do

Consumers Union says that consumers who want to minimize any possible risk of exposure to mad cow disease can buy organic beef, which cannot be fed any animal by-products, since mad cow is spread through feeding animal-based protein supplements to cattle.

Consumers Union also said that the cuts that are least likely to contain the infectious agent are solid cuts of beef with no bone in them. The riskiest materials are brains, followed by cuts like hamburger and sausage, which, if not properly handled in the slaughterhouse, may contain central nervous system tissue, the part of the animal where the infection occurs.

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