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News Update: BSE Reactions
June 28, 2005

U.S. cattlemen everywhere braced themselves last weekend for fallout from Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns' announcement June 24 of the second confirmed case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in the United States. While some expected — or are still expecting — the worst, early reactions to the announcement have been mixed.

Perhaps the most severe response came from Taiwan, which quickly shut its borders to U.S. beef shortly after the findings were announced. The country's resistance to U.S. beef products comes just more than two months after it officially lifted its previous 15-month-long ban on U.S. boneless beef, a ban spurred by the late 2003 BSE finding. According to a Reuters article released yesterday, only beef previously headed to Taiwan and loaded on ships before June 25 will be allowed to enter the Taiwanese marketplace.

Reaction from Japan, meanwhile, has been cautious. Japanese officials initially implied they would continue plans for trade negotiations uninterrupted; however, Reuters reported that officials of the country's Food Safety Commission aren't ruling out possible trade delays due to the BSE finding.

Equally varied responses are cropping up on the home front as well. News of the first possibly native U.S. animal infected with BSE has appeared on most main television news networks, and newspapers nationwide have published full-blown articles — some of which suggest the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) may have botched testing protocols.

Regardless of worldwide media coverage, however, the trading floor was rather quiet Monday, with fed-cattle futures up 35¢ per hundredweight (cwt.), to $82.52 per cwt., Billings Gazette reported. That's reassuring news to beef producers, many of whom have been left wondering why a retest of samples was conducted in the first place. While the USDA maintains that the Office of the Inspector General ordered further testing, relatively little is known about the reasons behind the recommendation.

Now, a team of USDA scientists is conducting an investigation to determine the animal's herd of origin, and USDA plans to work with international experts to develop a new protocol that includes dual confirmatory tests, Johanns stated.

In response to USDA's developing testing procedures and announcements and in an effort to calm any developing consumer fears regarding BSE, producer organizations and government agencies alike, for perhaps the first time in months, have reached at least one general consensus — U.S. beef remains safe.


— by Crystal Albers, Angus Productions Inc. assistant editor

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