The U.S. Department of Agriculture is temporarily suspending the importation of processed Brazilian beef and associated products from Brazil. According to USDA officials Wednesday in Washington D.C., this decision is a temporary action pending the release of requested data to
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is temporarily suspending the importation of processed Brazilian beef and associated products from Brazil.
According to USDA officials Wednesday in Washington D.C., this decision is a temporary action pending the release of requested data to complete a bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) risk assessment.
“Once the USDA is assured that Brazil has taken sound measures” to prevent the disease, the suspension “will be lifted,” said Jerry Redding, a USDA official.
“It is more of a hold on product than a ban. No more Brazilian canned or cooked beef is going into circulation right now, but there is no recall of any Brazilian product. There is no problem. We have no intention to recall any product,” Redding reiterated.
Betty Domdoma of Kapa’a was worried earlier this week because she had bought canned corn beef from Brazil at a local store before learning of the ban. But Redding said Domdoma and other consumers need not be frightened.
“There is no evidence of (mad cow disease) in Brazil,” Redding said.
The only Brazilian or Argentinean beef that is allowed into the United States at this time is canned or pre-cooked.
“It’s been light years since either live or uncooked” beef from either of the South American countries has been allowed into the U.S. Redding said. “That (ban) is because of a disease called foot and mouth.”
The Brazilian government has protested the temporary hold on its canned and pre-cooked beef products, stating in official government press releases that all its cattle is grass-fed.
Mad cow disease is believed to be spread through bone meal of diseased animals fed to cows and other ruminants instead of grass.
The USDA stressed that its position since the mad cow disease began appearing in Britain is to be proactive.
The USDA began its active surveillance efforts in 1990. As of Dec. 7, 2000, the agency had prohibited all imports of rendered animal protein products, regardless of species, from Europe. The decision followed the recent determination by the European Union that feed of non-ruminant origin was potentially cross-contaminated with the mad cow agent.
The restriction applies to products originating, rendered, processed or otherwise associated with European products.
USDA took this action “to prevent potentially cross-contaminated products entering the United States,” officials said.
The Brazilian ban is different in that it is temporary. And, as USDA officials noted, there hasn’t been a proven case of mad cow disease in Brazil.
Worldwide, more than 180,000 suspected cases of the disease have been reported. Ninety-five percent of them occurred in the United Kingdom.
The USDA said that no cases of mad cow disease have been confirmed in the United States.
One case has been discovered in Canada, and that animal and all its herdmates were destroyed.
Between 1981 and 1989, 496 cattle from Britain were imported into the U.S. Those animals have been quarantined since April of 1996. Only four of them remain alive.
On Aug. 4, 1997, the U.S. banned the feeding of ruminant protein (ground bones) to other ruminants (cows, sheep etc.). But only 2,700 of the country’s 10,000 feed lots have been inspected to see that the ruminant ban is being enforced.
A feed mill in Texas was cited last month for mixing meat and bone meal derived from U.S. cattle into a feed supplement later fed back to other cattle. That case is under investigation.
Grass-fed beef, like free-range chickens, cannot be raised in the cramped conditions of feed-fed animals.
Staff writer Dennis Wilken can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) and mailto:dwilken@pulitzer.net
The Associated press contributed to this report
