## ![](media/image1.png){width="6.81875in" height="1.5298611111111111in"}

> **\"USDA & Harvard Announce Results of BSE Risk Assessment\"**
>
> **with Secretary of Agriculture Ann M.Veneman**

# **Friday, November 30, 2001**

> MS. HARRISON: Thank you for coming out today. My name is Alisa
> Harrison. I am the press secretary here at USDA.
>
> We\'ll begin very shortly. I just wanted to make a few requests of
> you. When we begin the question and answer session, there are people
> listening in on a phone line, so we will have people with microphones,
> if you wait until the microphone gets to you to ask your question.
> Also, we would request one question per reporter after we go around,
> to make sure we get everybody\'s first question first before we go on.
>
> The information that you were handed today will be on the website. In
> fact, it\'s live now. And hard copies of the full risk assessment will
> be available right after the press conference. For those of you who
> want the 500-page copy of the report, you can talk with Ed Curlett\],
> with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and he\'ll be at
> the back of the room at the end of the session.
>
> We\'ll begin shortly.
>
> **SECRETARY VENEMAN:**
>
> " Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for being here. It is
> a pleasure for me to be here today to present the long-awaited risk
> assessment on bovine spongiform encephalopathy\--I\'m not sure I said
> that quite right\--or BSE, which was conducted by Harvard University.
>
> \"We have here with us Dr. George Gray, who is the deputy director of
> the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis and the director of the
> assessment, and he\'s going to give you some of the details of the
> report after I give a few opening comments.
>
> "In addition, to help answer some of the questions today, we have
> Bobby Acord, the administrator of the Animal and Plant Health
> Inspection Service; acting administrator for FSIS, the Food Safety
> Inspection Service, Maggie Glavin\]; Dr. Steve Sundlof, the director
> of the Food and Drug Administration Center for Veterinary Medicine is
> here; and Linda Detwiler, the senior staff veterinarian at the Animal
> and Plant Health Inspection Service and one of our real gurus on this
> issue. I also want to introduce our Under Secretary for Food Safety,
> Dr. Elsa Murano, who has been with us for a few months now.
>
> -more-
>
> -2-
>
> "Preventing BSE has been a top priority for government and industry
> since it was first discovered in Great Britain in 1986. BSE has not
> been detected in the U.S., nor has there been a case of the human
> form, variant CJD, in the U.S. We want to keep it that way, and this
> report is an important tool inguaging the effectiveness of our current
> program and identifying additional measures that we can take to
> strengthen our efforts.
>
> "In fact, one of my overriding goals since taking office has been to
> ensure strong food safety programs and to strengthen our pest and
> animal disease protection programs.
>
> "When we came into office here in January, we inherited good, solid
> programs, but we faced many issues this year; the threat of
> foot-and-mouth disease, which we dealt with all throughout the spring
> and into the summer. Then came September 11th, and we\'ve worked very
> hard to bolster critical infrastructure programs that protect us from
> pests and disease and protect the integrity of our food safety system.
>
> "This year we have invested more resources in our food safety and pest
> and disease prevention program. Earlier this week, President Bush
> signed into law USDA\'s current budget, and that budget increased
> funding for both food safety and APHIS systems.
>
> "As well, this year, we have used our authority to approve emergency
> funds to enhance our protections by adding new personnel, inspectors,
> and resources for our ports of entry. We have also begun critical
> modernization projects at some of our key laboratories, such as the
> ones in Ames, Iowa, and Plum Island.
>
> "Strong prevention, detection, and eradication programs are imperative
> to reduce potential threats to our food supply, and we must have solid
> relationships in coordination with other federal agencies, states, and
> our industry. These partnerships are critical as we continue our
> vigilance.
>
> "Secretary Thompson and I have been working together to increase our
> coordination and cooperation between our two agencies. These efforts
> are helping USDA and HHS take responsible actions the prevent the
> introduction of BSE into the United States. But the firewalls that
> have kept BSE out of our country began way before we arrived. In 1989,
> USDA placed import restrictions on cattle meat, and bone meal, and
> certain beef products from countries with BSE.
>
> "In 1990, USDA began a comprehensive surveillance program to search
> for any signs of the disease in cattle. And in 1997, as an additional
> preventative measure, the FDA prohibited the use of ruminant-derived
> protein in feed for cattle. Throughout the 1990s, USDA expanded import
> restrictions while at the same time increasing the testing for BSE.
>
> "Both agencies also implemented aggressive education, training and
> outreach to veterinarians, cattle producers and the industry. And this
> summer Secretary Thompson announced an action plan outlining
> additional new steps to improve scientific understanding of BSE that
> incorporates a comprehensive approach to further strengthen research,
> resources and existing inspection efforts.
>
> -more-
>
> -3-
>
> "All of these steps, we believe, have played an important role in the
> U.S. in preventing BSE.
>
> "In 1998, USDA entered into a cooperative agreement with Harvard
> University School of Public Health to conduct a risk assessment to
> evaluate the ways BSE could spread if it were ever introduced into the
> United States. This study has allowed for a complete examination of
> the government\'s protection programs, and today Dr. Gray is here to
> share, in detail, those results.
>
> "I am pleased to report that using complex mathematical models, the
> study found that the risk of BSE entering this country is extremely
> low. Harvard\'s analysis also found that if BSE were to enter the
> U.S., our safeguarding systems are strong and would prevent it from
> spreading. These findings are important to consumers and to
> agriculture. It shows that we are taking responsible and appropriate
> measures here in the U.S. However, we cannot let down our guard, and
> we must continue to improve and strengthen our firewalls, and we are
> committed to do just that.
>
> "Now I\'d like to turn the microphone over to Dr. Gray to present you
> with the highlights of the report.
>
> **DR. GRAY:**
>
> Thank you, Secretary Veneman, and good afternoon.
>
> "To tell you about our report, I first want to tell you how we got
> started. We had a lot to learn when it comes to BSE. We spent 3 years
> learning about BSE, what causes it, how it spreads, what happened in
> Europe. We studied the U.S. agriculture system to understand how it
> works. We looked at government regulations, government rules, and the
> levels of compliance with those rules. That led us, together with
> colleagues at Tuskegee University, who played an important role in our
> analysis, to build a model of the real world, as we know it today, so
> we could simulate what might happen if the disease were
> introduced\--if BSE were introduced to the United States.
>
> "What we found is that the United States is very resistant to BSE. As
> far as we know, it\'s not here now, but if it does get in, it can\'t
> become established. Basically, with the measures that are already in
> place, even with imperfect compliance, the disease in the cattle herd
> dies out, and the potential for people to be exposed to infected
> cattle parts is tiny.
>
> "We ran dozens of scenarios and thousands of variations of each of
> those with our model, and we couldn\'t come up with a single situation
> where BSE could take hold or spread in any significant way. In every
> case, the disease dies out, usually in about 20 years.
>
> "So here\'s what happens if BSE does get in. We simulated the
> importation of a variety of a number of cows. These are hypothetical
> scenarios, and in fact of course it\'s illegal to import cows into the
> United States from places that currently have BSE. But we wanted to
> see what might happen. So we ran scenarios with the importation of one
> cow, five cows, ten cows, all the way up to five hundred cows infected
> with BSE, brought into the United States without anyone knowing. In
> every single scenario, the disease dies out.
>
> -more-
>
> -4-
>
> "There were, we predict, a few new cases of BSE. Some American animals
> would become infected, but there would certainly not be an epidemic.
> This happens largely because of the feed ban instituted by the Food
> and Drug Administration, although not perfect, breaks the loop that
> allows infected parts of a cow from a sick cow to get back to a
> healthy animal.
>
> "We also didn\'t just look at what\'s happening today. We looked back
> into the past. We looked at 334 animals that were imported from the
> United Kingdom into the United States between 1980 and the prohibition
> of that import that went into place in 1989. We find that there is a
> small possibility, a very small possibility, that some amount of BSE
> could have entered the United States in those years. But even if it
> did, it might not have caused disease, and if it did cause disease,
> the measures put in place subsequently have arrested the disease and
> begun its eradication.
>
> "So what do we know about human health? Based on everything we know
> now about variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, variant CJD, the human
> form of what\'s known as mad cow disease, it\'s very unlikely that
> this will become a serious health problem in the United States. And
> here\'s how we figured that out.
>
> "Under our scenarios, we calculated not only how many sick animals
> might arise, but what might happen to the infectious part of those
> animals. We measured this in a unit called a cattle oral ID 50, and
> this is one of those complicated mathematical things that the
> Secretary alluded to. What this is, is a measure. It\'s a way of
> thinking about exposure of animals. ID 50 is a unit that if a cow was
> to eat it, would make her sick with a 50-percent probability. If she
> got more, she\'d be more likely to get sick; if she got less, she\'d
> be less likely to get sick.
>
> "This is important because this is the way we track the infectious
> part of a cow through the U.S. system. In our worst-case scenario, the
> importation of 500 sick cows, the number of these ID 50s potentially
> getting into the human food supply is about 170 a year over 20 years.
> We can\'t say what that might mean for human health. But what we can
> do to try and understand its magnitude is to compare it to a situation
> that we know, and we can look at the United Kingdom.
>
> "Their estimates are there are over a million or in the neighborhood
> of a million sick animals in the course of their epidemic that likely
> put millions of these cattle Oral ID 50s potentially available for
> human consumption. They\'ve had roughly 100 cases of vCJD so far, and
> we don\'t know what will happen, but it helps us understand the
> magnitude of the potential, potential exposure, under a hypothetical
> situation of the importation of 500 animals in the United States. Now
> that importation of 500 animals is pretty far-fetched, I think we
> would all agree on that. In the scenario which has perhaps the
> greatest likelihood of occurring, the importation of one sick animal,
> an animal slips through. We bring in a BSE-infected animal. In that
> case we would have just six of these ID-50s for potential human
> consumption over 20 years, again comparing potentially millions that
> were in the United Kingdom.
>
> -more-
>
> -5-
>
> "Now to reduce the risk for cows, our analysis found the key is
> compliance with the FDA\'s feed ban. Keeping the parts of animals that
> are potentially infectious from getting from a healthy\--sick animal
> to a healthy one is the key.
>
> "Now, remember, one of the things that we\'ve learned from Europe is
> that these ID-50s, these infectious parts of animals, are found only
> in a few parts of a sick cow, mostly in the brain, the spinal cord and
> some other parts of the central nervous system, and not, it\'s
> important to note, in meat, in milk, in fat, and in other parts of the
> animal that are usually eaten.
>
> "One of the important things for keeping the risk to humans low is
> keeping\--is the way in which we handle these infectious tissues,
> brain and spinal cord, in processing plants for making human food.
>
> "Can we say that there won\'t be a case of BSE in the United States?
> No. We can\'t say that. We can\'t say that there might not be a case
> of variant CJD in the United States, even when it can\'t be traced
> back to the United Kingdom or to Europe. But what we can say, even in
> the absence of zero risk, we all know there\'s no such thing as zero
> risk. What we can say after three years of study is we\'re confident
> that BSE is not going to become a major public health or animal health
> threat for the United States.
>
> "With that, I\'ll turn the podium back to Secretary Veneman".
>
> **SECRETARY VENEMAN:**
>
> 'Thank you very much, Dr. Gray. I think you can all see that a
> tremendous amount of work has gone into this study to produce this
> model and this report, and I want to thank you and your colleagues,
> Dr. Gray, as well as recognize the contributions of those from
> Tuskegee University. Some of the representatives are also with us
> today.
>
> "As Dr. Gray said, the risk of BSE being introduced into this country
> is very low, and that is very good news. The report shows that early
> actions by the U.S. and years of vigilance have been successful. But
> as I said earlier, we must maintain our vigilance and we must continue
> our work to strengthen our firewalls to keep BSE out of the United
> States.
>
> "This scientific study will be used to evaluate enhancements to our
> current protection systems and further reduce the risk of BSE, and
> based on our preliminary review of the report, we are now seeing a
> series of actions today aimed at bolstering our protection system.
>
> "First, the risk assessment will be peer-reviewed by a team of outside
> experts to validate its scientific integrity.
>
> "Second, surveillance is a critical part of our multifaceted strategy
> which is why we are announcing that this year we will more than double
> the amount of testing for BSE in the United States. This increased
> testing will target more than 12,500 cattle samples, up from 5000
> during fiscal year 2001.
>
> -more-
>
> -6-
>
> "Third, in the coming weeks USDA will announce in the Federal Register
> the availability of a policy options paper that will outline
> additional possible regulatory actions aimed at limiting the risk of
> BSE exposure in the United States. To ensure these options are
> science-based, they will be tested using the computer model developed
> by Harvard to see what impact they would have on further reducing
> risk. These options that will be included in the paper will include
> prohibiting the use of brain and spinal cord from specified cattle in
> human food; prohibiting the use of central nervous system tissues in
> boneless beef products, including meat from advanced meat recovery
> systems; and prohibiting the use of the vertebral column from certain
> categories of cattle, including downed animals, in the production of
> meat from advanced meat recovery systems.
>
> "USDA will invite public comment on the options, and then proceed,
> following those comments, with appropriate regulatory action.
>
> "Fourth, USDA will issue a proposed rule to prohibit the use of
> certain stunning devices used to immobilize cattle during slaughter.
> Now while the industry has largely stopped using these specific
> devices, USDA is taking this action to ensure they are entirely
> eliminated as a proactive measure.
>
> "And finally, USDA will publish an advanced notice of proposed
> rulemaking, or an ANPR, as it\'s commonly referred to, to consider
> disposal options for dead stock from farms and ranches. Such animals
> are considered a potential pathway for the spread of BSE in the animal
> chain.
>
> "We feel that these additional measures, when coupled with the strong
> firewalls that have been put in place throughout the past several
> years by both U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of
> Health and Human Services, through the Food and Drug Administration,
> will continue to keep our BSE program strong.
>
> "Again, I want to personally thank everyone at Harvard and Tuskegee
> for all their hard work in developing this scientific risk assessment.
> As well, a large thank you and acknowledgement of appreciation goes to
> all the employees of USDA and Health and Human Services, our states,
> our industry partners, and consumer groups, who continue to work
> diligently to protect America\'s food and agriculture system from this
> devastating disease.
>
> "This administration is committed to strong food safety and test and
> disease prevention programs. Today\'s action, with our investments in
> these critical areas and the short time we\'ve been in office,
> demonstrates that we are continuing to move in the right direction.
> And the Harvard risk assessment allows us to move forward with our
> prevention efforts to maintain the solid reputation of America\'s food
> supply here and around the world.
>
> "Our future actions will continue to be based on the best available
> science and involves close coordination with our other Federal
> partners, states, industry and consumer interests.
>
> "Now we will be happy to take your questions, and answer any issues
> that you may have. Thank you."
>
> **-**more-
>
> -7-
>
> **QUESTION:**
>
> **I wonder if you might just talk a little bit more about this feed
> ban that you talked about, and how the feed ban has been successful
> and would be successful in preventing this. I don\'t fully understand
> what the feed ban is. And then also if you could just help me define a
> little bit more the ID-50s. I\'m at a loss on this?**
>
> "Dr. Gray: Okay. In 1997, the Food and Drug Administration put in a
> regulation that prohibits the use of mammalian protein, with a few
> exceptions, being fed to ruminants. What we learned from the United
> Kingdom is that the way BSE apparently spreads is when parts of an
> infected animal are rendered and used as a protein supplement in feed
> for other animals. A cycle is set up. That\'s the only way that these
> unusual tissues\--in most cases, central nervous system
> tissues\--won\'t get from one animal to another. Learning from the
> experience in Europe, the Food and Drug Administration put a
> regulation in place to block that, to cut that loop. That cycle cannot
> continue because there\'s a ban on the feeding of ruminant-derived
> protein back to ruminants".
>
> "Dr. Gray Yes. It was not used\--it\'s not\--it\'s not like that at
> all. In fact, what\'s used is some parts are recycled and the animals
> are then\--are recycled and it\'s used as a protein supplement. It is
> no longer done in this country. The FDA feed ban prohibits it and, in
> fact, we find that is perhaps the most significant measure in keeping
> the United States in a position where BSE cannot become established in
> this country.

### QUESTION: \[Inaudible.\]

> "Dr. Gray ID-50s. It\'s our currency that we use to keep track of the
> infectious parts of a cow. You can think of it as sort of a measure
> that lets us know if a cow is kind of\--could pass a lot of the
> disease to other animals, or only a little bit. And when we think
> about human tissue or human exposure, let\'s just think about whether
> humans in the U.S. are exposed to a lot or a little compared to other
> places.
>
> "So it\'s just kind of a currency way of keeping track of things. It
> lets us know if other animals will be infected, and there we find that
> in most cases we see very few new animals infected if we bring BSE to
> this country, and the amount of infectivity that parent\--excuse me,
> that humans, people are exposed to is very low. It lets us keep track
> of the size of the exposures.
>
> **QUESTION:**
>
> **David Brown from The Washington Post. Secretary Veneman, the report
> says that if one eliminated animals that die on the farm from the
> rendering stream of animals, that would get rid of about 70 percent of
> the hypothetical exposure to human beings. Did you consider just
> proposing immediately a ban of the use of those animals in the
> rendering stream and if not, why not?**
>
> **-**more-
>
> -8-
>
> **SECRETARY VENEMAN:-**
>
> "Well, again, we do have among the proposals that I presented earlier
> a Federal Register notice that will go out to look at the various
> options for the downed animals that you\'re discussing.
>
> "We have looked at a number of options, but obviously we want to make
> sure that we do all of this based on sound science, and in order to do
> that, we need to make sure how this model interacts with the various
> actions that we are looking at as possibilities to take, and as well
> to look at the science and input that would be gained from putting
> this out to public comment and assessing the various options that may
> be available".
>
> "MS. Detwiler I\'d just like to add a little bit more. The elimination
> of dead stock, the reason that would be for an ANPR is you can imagine
> animals die on a farm. That\'s going to happen. And the options can be
> multi-fold and even regional on what you do. The main thing is to
> break the cycle, so you might even still want to render them and then
> do something with the rendering.
>
> "We need to have an infrastructure in order to handle these carcasses,
> and by having an ANPR we throw open the options of having the
> industry, having farmers, having others help us in solutions. And I
> think the thing is that there are multi-ways in order to do this
> safely. But I think we just need a lot of options in looking at how to
> handle this, because we don\'t want to create a bigger problem with
> disposal by doing that, just start out thinking about it"
>
> **QUESTION:**
>
> **I\'m Sally Schuff. I\'m with Feedstuffs. My question is for Dr.
> Sundlof. Sir, Secretary Veneman has described the future regulatory
> steps that USDA will take. Could you discuss what future regulatory
> issues may be coming up with FDA?**
>
> DR. SUNDLOF: "Yes, thank you. We\--let me just before I talk about the
> future regulatory steps, let me just talk about what we are doing in
> terms of increasing compliance with the present feed rule.
>
> "We were fortunate this year that we had asked for funding to really
> step up the amount of inspections and enforcements that goes on not
> only within the United States, but also at our borders, our ports of
> entry, to prevent the feeding of the prohibited material of the
> ruminant protein back to cattle.
>
> "We were\--the President just signed a budget for \$15 million for the
> FDA. Thirteen million of that is going specifically to inspection. So
> we will inspect every company, every firm, commercial firm that deals
> with prohibited material on a yearly basis. We will get around to
> every one of them every year. So that\'s one of the things that we\'re
> doing.
>
> -more-
>
> -9-
>
> "We are also going to be testing samples. We have developed some feed
> tests that we can actually take samples that may not have\--they may
> say they don\'t have the prohibited protein in there, but we can
> actually test it, and we\'re going to be doing some of that as well.
>
> "So I think the actions that we\'re taking is very consistent with the
> message that we\'ve gotten from the Harvard risk assessment.
>
> "In terms of the present regulation, we had a Part 15 hearing. It\'s a
> public hearing, exactly one month ago today, in Kansas City, where we
> asked the question about the existing rule. There are some exemptions
> to the rule, and we thought it would be a good idea at this time to
> reexamine those and see if there\'s still a scientific basis for
> exempting certain proteins that we do allow into cattle feed.
>
> "And so we will be going out also with an advanced notice of proposed
> rulemaking probably the\--within the first part of next year, which
> lays out those questions again. Certain things, especially the feeding
> of poultry litter. I know you didn\'t like cattle, but cattle\--cattle
> are allowed to consume recycled poultry litter. But one of the things
> we know now is that that can actually have still feed in it which may
> contain ruminant protein. So we\'re going to be look at that.
>
> "We\'re going to be looking at other things like plate waste, that
> there are other exemptions that we will look very closely at the
> Harvard risk assessment to try and determine if we changed any of
> those, what kind of impact that might have in reducing what is already
> a very small risk. So that\'s what the FDA is doing".
>
> **QUESTION:**
>
> **Jill Carroll, Wall Street Journal. \[Inaudible.\] You said the best
> defense we have right now is the feed ban. Would it make sense at all
> to just say no chickens, no pigs, nobody gets ruminant feed? I know it
> would kind of create a storage problem, probably, but might that be a
> good solution to eliminate all risk and be super, super sure we\'re?**
>
> DR. SUNDLOF: "Well, it\'s certainly an option, and it\'s one that we
> are going to address in the advanced notice of proposed rulemaking. I
> think as Linda Detwiler has expressed you can\'t just do that without
> building an infrastructure to be able to deal with the problem,
> because there\'s 50 billion pounds of animal protein that gets
> rendered every year, and that could be a tremendous environmental
> problem if there were not structures in place to be able to handle
> that material in an environmentally safe way".
>
> **QUESTION:**
>
> **This is for the Secretary. Phil Brasher with The Associated Press.
> This study identifies beef from advanced meat recovery systems as
> being by far the biggest single risk of human exposure. And as I
> understand it, you all have told companies not to\--or to take out
> nervous system material. Why don\'t you simply prohibit it so that it
> can\'t get in\--or can\'t be in meat at all?**

**SECRETARY VENEMAN**:

-more-

-10-

"Well, that is one of the options that we\'re looking at in the Federal
Register notice. I think I will have Meg Glavin address the specifics of
your question".

> MS. GLAVIN: "We require plants through our inspection program to
> remove the spinal cord prior to putting bones into the advanced meat
> recovery system. We regulate that both through our inspection, visual
> inspection, and through some testing of the end product.
>
> "What we\'re putting in the option paper is to put that into a final
> regulation to make it very\--in regulation that that is prohibited.
> But the practice today is that our inspectors are required to make
> sure that the spinal cord is not going in."

### QUESTION

> **Do you guys have a dollar effect on the\--how\--if a mad-cow disease
> outbreak did happen here in the United States, what kind of impact
> that would have on the beef industry? I don\'t know if you guys have a
> dollar amount of\--you know, a range?**.
>
> MS Detwiler " We don\'t have one for the United States, but we have
> some figures from out of the United Kingdom, at least indirect costs,
> and it\'s over \$6 billion over the time, but that\'s on cost. I think
> it\'s very hard to put a pencil to and come up with figures on
> indirect costs and other types of losses. So I think that\'s one of
> those nebulous numbers.
>
> "I\'d also like to say on this study for somebody who has talked to a
> lot of you in the room here over the years since I\'ve been doing this
> for 12 years, is that, again, from a technical standpoint, for a
> country with low risk factors and unlikely\--and we\'ve been
> looking\--put the mirror to ourselves three times now. In 1990 the
> European Union did a risk assessment and now Harvard. It\'s my
> experience on this and even around the world that for a country that
> has low risk factors and an unlikelihood, that, again, being very,
> very aggressive on this and that we\'re willing to take\--and to show
> that we\'re willing to take even more measures to put more firewalls
> up. And I don\'t know any other country in the same situation as the
> United States that has really put this kind of scrutiny through
> Harvard that they\'ve done for three years".
>
> **QUESTION**:
>
> **Philip Brasser with AP again. This is a question for Dr. Gray. Did
> you assess the reduction in risk of increased testing of cattle?**
>
> DR. GRAY: " No, we didn\'t, because if you think about it, testing
> doesn\'t change the likelihood of this disease spreading. Testing is
> very important for us to identify whether the disease is here. It
> helps us understand whether BSE could be in this country. But the
> systems we have that protect us, that stop this cycle, that keep the
> disease from spreading, are passive. We don\'t even need to know the
> disease is here to stop it from spreading. That\'s the beauty of
> things like the feed ban.
>
> "So surveillance and looking for the disease is important for
> information to help us know the state we\'re in, but the measures that
> we have that are preventing the disease from spreading are out there
> and working, whether we know it\'s here or not".
>
> **-**more-
>
> -11-
>
> **QUESTION**:
>
> **David Brown from the Post. For anyone, approximately how many
> animals die on the farm and need to be disposed of each year? Is this
> a huge number or can they not just be buried on the farm? In other
> words, why does an infrastructure need to be created to dispose of
> them?**
>
> MS Detwiler "It\'s very complex, and you can imagine in certain parts
> of the country. I\'m from New Jersey, and, you know, it\'s an urban
> state, and burial on the farm sometimes is not practical. We have the
> Northern States like the New England States. When it\'s winter, you
> know, the ground is frozen and you can\'t just bury on the farm. So
> the rendering, structuring, the dead stock removal from public health,
> from animal health, is just an essential part of just animal health in
> the country in general.
>
> "So, again, it\'s not that simple, and the country and the regions
> are, you know, very different. Water tables are different. State
> regulations are different. So it\'s something that you really need a
> lot of heads to come together on this option."
>
> **QUESTION:**
>
> **Ed Maxiner with Farm Progress News. Just a question for any of USDA
> or FDA who wish to answer, but in perspective, we have a lot of
> diseases that come through the animal food chain, you know, that kill
> people regularly across the country. My understanding of this report
> is that the danger of someone dying in this country is so close to
> zero it\'s almost indistinguishable. So my question is: Why the list
> of added resources going to something that has virtually no, you know,
> danger versus a lot of things probably that could use some more
> resources to prevent?**

### Secretary Ann M. Venemen

> "Well, I think Linda has a lot more history having worked with this
> for 12 years, but I think that one of the important things about BSE
> is that it is one of those animal disease issues that affects human
> health as well. It is also a disease that very little has been known
> about. We saw what happened in Europe with this disease. We saw the
> impact on human health. And I think that what the government has done
> in this instance is tried to take every path possible to determine how
> to make sure that we do not get this disease in the United States
> because of its severe impact on human health.
>
> "So I think the government\'s acted very responsibly, having a model
> like this with the risk assessment to really look at what are the
> pathways, what are the risk options, is different than a lot of the
> other diseases that we deal with, and the way it travels not much has
> been known about, so we really needed to look at the overall risk
> pathways. How do we maintain a BSE-free country and maintain a safe
> food supply and maintain consumer confidence? And I think, you know,
> while this study was commissioned three years ago, and it\'s taken a
> long time to complete, as Linda Detwiler says, it\'s one in a series
> of different actions that\'s been taken, and we want to make sure that
> we don\'t have any undue risks to the public because we haven\'t taken
> every possible option we can in this case".
>
> -more-
>
> -12-
>
> "MS. Glavin Can I just add that we work every day to prevent all
> foodborne diseases. We invest an enormous number of resources in
> preventing foodborne diseases. What the Harvard study shows is that
> there are some obvious choke points for this disease that it makes
> sense to pay attention to".
>
> **QUESTION**:
>
> **Randy Fabi with Reuters. This is a question for Dr. Gray. With the
> breakdown of trade barriers and new mad-cow cases popping up in Japan
> and possibly throughout Europe, does your study indicate that if there
> was import of mad cow from other countries we don\'t know have the
> disease?**
>
> DR. GRAY: "Well, that\'s a good question. This question\--trade is
> moving things around all over the world. You\'ve already heard about
> some of the measures that are in place by USDA that when a country is
> known to have BSE, keep animals and potentially risky materials out.
>
> "In some ways, we\'ve learned from this model that it doesn\'t matter
> where the animals come from. It doesn\'t matter where the BSE might
> come from. We\'re looking for it. USDA is trying to stop it. But if it
> gets in, it can\'t spread. That\'s the important thing. We have a
> system in place that acts to check the growth of the disease if it\'s
> introduced and gradually eliminated.
>
> So it does depend\--it doesn\'t really depend where it might come
> from. We\'ve got a system that seems resilient."
>
> MS. Detwiler " I\'m just going to\--on the government standpoint, I
> think as you\'ve seen in the past, we\'re constantly\--one of the
> things, I think, that you\'ve seen over 12 years, we\'re constantly
> modifying\--you know, we put the ban on in \'89, Europe on in \'97,
> meat and bone meal in 2000, surveillance suggested over time with new
> techniques and new populations of surveillance. And in this regard,
> we\'re in the process of working with Canada and Mexico because we
> realize we\'re North America. We\'re not isolated here on this
> continent. So we work with Canada and Mexico, and we\'re in the
> process of evaluating the world, the remaining countries of the world,
> that some of that\'s already been done to look at other risks and
> identify if there\'s more things that we need to be doing in regards
> to import restrictions".
>
> **QUESTION:**
>
> **I\'m Judy Holland from Hearst Newspapers. I\'m just trying to
> visualize, Dr. Gray, exactly how you tested animals and people. Did
> you do nose swabs? I mean, what\'s the procedure for testing?**
>
> "DR. GRAY: "No, this is a situation\--because, of course, BSE, as far
> as we know, is not in this country, we can\'t go out and find cases.
> APHIS has a surveillance system where they\'re looking for animals.
>
> Instead, what we did is we made computer cows and computer people that
> could be exposed, and we looked to see what would be\--what would
> happen if BSE were introduced into this country and looked to see if
> more cows would get sick, if people might be exposed to infectious
> tissues.
>
> \--more-
>
> -13-
>
> What we did is entirely\--it\'s a computer exercise, intended to
> reflect the way in which the world works today."
>
> MS. Detwiler You want to know how they\'re tested? The only way to
> test in cows for BSE is to look at the brain tissue. So we test
> animals that actually have signs of neurologic disease or ones that
> have\--like the downed animals that may be masking those, and that\'s
> a population that we\--we work, APHIS does, in cooperation with our
> state counterparts, the state animal health officials. And the whole
> effort forward is this is done on the animal side but also with Food
> Safety Inspection Service and Health and Human Services. It\'s kind of
> to animal health, food safety, and public health. We do cooperative.
>
> MS Harrison "Thank you very much. For technical follow-up questions,
> FSIS, APHIS, and FDA will be available. Thank you for coming."
>
> \[Whereupon, the conference was concluded.\]

\###