DATE=04/04/01

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=CONGRESS / MAD COW (L ONLY)

NUMBER=2-274545

BYLINE=JANICE BERLINER

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

INTERNET=YES

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: A food safety expert says she believes mad cow disease could enter the U-S food supply system. And she called on the U-S government to take steps to reduce the threat. V-O-A's Janice Berliner in Washington reports a U-S Senate committee heard testimony Wednesday on the mad cow issue.

TEXT: The outbreak of mad cow disease, which has claimed the lives of about 80 Europeans, prompted the U-S Senate to question whether the disease could spread to the United States. Mad cow disease is linked to a brain-wasting illness in humans.

The director of food safety for a private public health group, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Caroline Smith DeWaal, says she is concerned because the U-S government has only a few hundred food inspectors to examine 57-thousand food manufacturers and warehouses in the United States.

Ms. DeWaal told the Senate commerce committee that advanced meat processing machines sometimes use parts of cattle that are infected with mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (B-S-E), and could transmit the disease to humans.

/// DEWAAAL ACT ///

These machines take the bones with attached meat and put them through a device that removes the meat from the bone. Advanced meat recovery systems produce a product that is called meat and is labeled "meat" on the package. If spinal cord is attached to the spinal columns that enter these machines, it is bound to be incorporated into the meat that is produced.

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She says spinal cords with B-S-E are highly infectious. Ms. DeWaal says her organization will petition the U-S Department of Agriculture next month to ban the spinal column and neck bones from cattle in advanced meat recovery systems.

However, William Hueston, associate dean of the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, who spent the past 12 years working on B-S-E, says the United States has prevented the disease by a series of well-thought out steps.

/// HUESTON ACT ///

The likelihood of B-S-E in the United States is very low, it is not zero. We realize there are potential exposures to B-S-E in the United States, but they're very, very few and very low. Nevertheless, the impact - should this disease occur in the United States - is quite large.

/// END ACT ///

Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois says he will introduce legislation to help prevent the disease and other health threats in both domestic and imported meat.

/// DURBIN ACT ///

The National Food Security and Safety Act will update information requirements on imported foods and feeds so that federal agents at the border will not have to play a guessing game as to whether a product does or does not contain meat. And if it does, whether that meat is from a cow or country where B-S-E is known to occur.

/// END ACT ///

Senator Durbin says the bill also calls for the creation of a national task force to update methods of verifying the absence of mad cow disease and related diseases in the United States. (Signed)

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