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Release No. 0435.03

of

Tele-News Conference Briefing

> **Updating Presumptive Positive BSE Case**

# Washington D.C. - December 24, 2003

**SECRETARY VENEMAN:** "Good morning everyone and thank you for your
continuing interest in this issue. This is the first of our technical
briefings I will not normally be a part of these technical briefings but
we thought it was important this morning that I at least begin this
process following the press conference that we had yesterday.

"

We have with us here, Dr. Ron DeHaven, who is the USDA Chief
Veterinarian, works for the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service
(APHIS), Dan Englejohn the FSIS Director of Quality Analysis, Dr.
Sundlof from the Food and Drug Administration Center for Veterinary
Medicine, Keith Collins, who is our Chief Economist as well as other
officials from USDA who were here to answer the technical questions.

"Again I am not going to repeat the information we went over yesterday
that is available on our website, the entire transcript. We will also
make transcripts from the morning shows that I Participated in this
morning available.

"APHIS and state animal health authorities have begun their extensive
epidemiological investigation into the presumptive positive case ob BSE.
We have obtained the following information overnight through this
investigation. First the farm involved is a large dairy operation. It
involves two premises in Southern Washington, totaling about 4,000 cows
on the two premises.

"The animal we know that is in question was purchased into this herd in
October of 2001, and we are tracing back the herd of residence prior to
this purchase the animal was culled from the herd due to complications
after calving. We are working together very closely with our colleagues
in state and federal agencies as part of this investigation. In addition
we have had several offers of assistance from our trading partners
including Canada who just experienced this to assist with the
investigation as well and we will be working with those experts.

"We have explored the option---I think I mentioned yesterday of sending
samples to England by military transport---we've now actually put a
sample on a commercial aircraft going to England. It should arrive in a
few hours. It will take about three to five days for confirmatory
results.

-more-

"Verns Moses Lake Meats of Moses Lake Washington establishment is
voluntarily recalling approximately 10,410 pounds of raw beef that may
have been exposed to tissues containing the infectious agent that causes
BSE. The beef subject to this Class II recall, which is 20 carcasses,
was produced on December 9^th^. It was then shipped to Midway Meats in
Centralia, Washington and several establishments where it was further
processed. And we can get you the information on those from the
technical experts.

"FSIS has enforcement, investigative and analytic officers at the 3
facilities and they are identifying and verifying the distribution of
the product. FSIS is continuing its investigation to ensure that all
distribution of beef products is correctly identified. FIS has
designated the recall as Class II due to extremely low likelihood that
the beef being recalled contains any infectious agent that causes BSE.
According to scientific evidence the tissues of highest infectivity are
the brain, the spinal cord and the distal ileum which were removed from
the rest of the carcass at slaughter therefore meat produced are cuts
that would not be expected to be infected or have an adverse public
health impact but are being recalled out of an abundance of caution.

"Consumers with other food safety questions call can our toll free meat
and poultry Hotline at 1-888-MP-Hotline. The Hotline is available in
English and in Spanish and can be reached from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Eastern time, Monday through Friday. Recorded food safety messages are
available on that line 24-hours a day. We will as I said continue to
hold regular technical briefings but unless otherwise notified we will
not hold one tomorrow on Christmas Day but will hold one the following
day on Friday at 11:00 a.m. using the same number you used today. We
will send out an advisory with the specifics later today.

"I've also been in the process of talking with my counterparts in other
countries as I said they've offered to help and I again want to
reiterate that our investigation is ongoing but we believe that our BSE
response plan that we started in 1990 and continued to update has
provided us a strong scientific basis upon which to control this
situation and we continue to believe that the risks to human health from
this situation is extremely low and people should continue to feel very
confident in the safety of our meat supply. At this point I will turn it
over to Dr. DeHaven and the other people in this room for your
questions. Thank you very much."

**DR. DEHAVEN:** I think Secretary Veneman has done a very good job of
summarizing this situation, as it exists. I would only add that we have
assembled a team of both state and federal officials in the state of
Washington to initiate our investigation and that work is ongoing as we
speak. With that operator I would pause and open it up for questions.

**QUESTION:** Yes, this is Seth Warenstein, Knight-Ridder newspapers. In
terms of tracking down the feed and how this cow got infected. How far
back are you going? I guess when was this cow culled from the herd due
to complications, a month ago, a year ago. And I guess how massive was
the feeding operation of potentially other cows that would have fed from
the same food source?

**DR. DEHAVEN:** We are still very early in this investigation. We
assembled our team late yesterday.

-more-

They are just hitting the ground now and becoming active and as I
mentioned we have both state and federal officials on the investigation
that of course would include officials from the Food and Drug
Administration who would be investigating the feed component of that.
Let me go back to the second part of your question though.

She was culled from the herd on December 9 and she was culled because of
paralysis that resulted from an apparent complication when she was
calving. So she was culled from the herd on December 9 of this year. She
was a purchased addition into this herd in October of 2001. Much of our
investigation right now is finding all of the premises this animal could
have resided on from the time she was born until she came to this herd,
again, in October of 2001. She's been there about two years. She came
into the herd as a two-year old animal, calved shortly after arriving
and would have been approximately on her third calf at the time she was
sent to slaughter.

As is indicated by the question we know that the source of infection,
the way that this disease spreads is through consumption of feed that
has been contaminated by protein from an infected animal so the
epidemiological investigation on the feed would coincide with the time
this animal entered into the herd from which she was sent to slaughter
but more importantly would focus on the feeding practices of the birth
herd from where this animal was born. I want to pause a moment and turn
the microphone over to Mr. Steve Sundlof of FDA for any additional
comments.

**STEVE SUNDLOF:** Ron pretty much summarized that before we can begin
in earnest an investigation of where the feed may potentially have
originated from we need to find out where the animal originated from.
The incubation period in cattle is on the order of 4 to 5 years.
Therefore in all likelihood the animal consumer contaminated feed
sometime back in a different herd than the one it was culled from. We do
have people on the ground right now in Washington, some of our field
investigators and our state investigators who are trying to track down
some of this information right now. But right now we just don't have
much to go on.

**QUESTION**: Can I follow up on this?

**MS. HARRISON:** One follow up question.

**QUESTION:** If you don't know where this cow came from the question is
then and the contamination likely came from the birth herd how serious
of it is an issue that you've got all this beef out there that could be
contaminated at the same time and you don't know where.

**RON DEHAVEN:** We have found as has been found in the situations in
Canada as well as Europe, even in those countries where the prevalence
of the disease has been very high, its not uncommon at all in fact more
common, that the number of animals that are infected within any herd is
very small and very often just one animal within a herd is found to be
infected. So that would likely be the case here, having said, that more
importantly we have in place the measures that would protect both the
public health and the animal health in that---as was the case with this
animal that was down. Any infectious tissues would have gone to
rendering and would not have gone to the human food chain and any of the
tissues that would have gone for human consumption would be safe tissues
even if they came from an infected animal. And as far as protecting
animal health we have had in place in this country since August 1997 a
feed ban that would prohibit the feeding of protein from cattle back to
other cattle so we think measures have been in place to ensure the
safety of both the public and animals.

-more-

**MS. HARRISON:** Operator next question.

**OPERATOR:** Randy Fabi you have the next question.

**QUESTION:** this is Randy Fabi with Reuters. An industry official is
already kind of questioning the timing that the news came out saying
that this is coming so close to the Christmas holiday that to ease the
consumer backlash and attention to it. My question is walk me through
the Dec. 9 sampling and why it took two weeks for all of these tests to
come back and I heard there's three tests. Walk me through each day that
you got the tests back.

**Dr. DeHaven:** Randy, Id' be happy to do that to the extent that we
know that information right now. The animal was sent to slaughter on
December 9 and that is when the samples would have been collected. Those
samples as a matter of routine now all go to our national Veterinary
Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa---this is our national laboratory and
that is where we have been conducting all of our testing. Because of the
volume we have been doing we have not gone to any of the rapid screening
tests that typically you can run in a matter of hour. We've been using
strictly the "gold standard" test, the immuno-histo-chemistry or IHC
test for all of these samples. Once those samples are set up it is
typically a five day turn around from the time the samples are received
until the results are available. So I don't know at this point from the
time the tissues were collected to the exact day they were received in
the laboratory, actually we know that they were received at the
laboratory at NVSL on December 11, two days later and then just because
of the volume of tests that we run and again it is typically a five day
turn around that would suggest that these samples would have been set up
on about the 16^th^ or 17^th^ of December and results initially
available to us on the 22^nd^ of December. Once we had the positive we
obviously ran some other tests that are more rapid and so by the next
day we had some additional test results also showing confirmed positive.
So there was no delay here other than the normal process and the fact we
are testing tens of thousands of samples a year at laboratories.

**MS. HARRISON:** This is Alisa Harrison; I guess I would just add to
that that the suggestion that anyone at the Department of Agriculture
timed this is completely false. I can assure you that there are a lot of
travel plans and vacation plans that have been changed so we can handle
this issue and so we can continue to provide the public with the
information that they need and so we can expedite the investigation so
that we can get the answers that we need. So with that operator we will
go to the next question.

**QUESTION:** Hi, I'm Andy Martin from the Chicago Tribune. What becomes
of the cows on this dairy farm? I know that they are quarantined but
ultimately what will be the disposition of these cows?

**DR. DEHAVEN:** No determination has been made yet. The cows are
currently located two premises but in effect they are all part of the
same large herd. The state of Washington has imposed a quarantine or
hold order on all of those animals and I think until we know more about
our epidemiological investigation it would be premature to speculate on
what might be the final disposition of those animals. So I think it
would be premature for us to make that determination but until we do
suffice it to say no animals will be leaving either of those premises.

-more-

**QUESTION:** One quick follow. This animal calved does the disease
typically spread to calves?

**DR. DEHAVEN:** The only known way this disease is known to be
transmitted is through consumption of contaminated feed, feed that is
contaminated with protein from an infected animal. There is no
scientific evidence to suggest that the disease is transmitted from
mother to offspring. Having said that, just as a precaution, it is
common practice in countries that have BSE to sacrifice and test
offspring of known infected animals. And that would be part of our
epidemiological investigation. But again it is premature to make any
determination about what might happen to the herd.

**QUESTION:** (inaudible) of the Nightly Business Report. Can you
comment on the economic impact of this? How much trade are we talking
about that is going to be shut off, and also a consumer group is saying
while muscle meat may be safer, hot dogs and hamburger are made with a
process that I frankly don't understand where scour the carcass and that
could lead to infected tissue going into the food supply.

**DR. DEHAVEN:** Let have Dr. Collins our Chief Economist answer the
first part of your question.

**DR. COLLINS:** This is Keith Collins. As Dr. DeHaven has pointed out
we are at the very early stages of this investigation so what's going to
happen in the marketplace, the economic effects is really going to hinge
on how this investigation turns out. Your questions specifically related
to exports---we do know that a number of countries suspended imports of
U.S. beef products and some of those are very sizeable trading partners.
Overall, our exports of beef for 2002 were \$2.6 billion. Most of that
trade goes to poor countries, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, as well as
Hong Kong, and as we know right now Japan and South Korea, as well as
Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Russia, and South Africa, have
suspended imports of U.S. products.

A sizeable market such as Mexico, which takes about a fifth of our beef,
and Canada which takes about a tenth of our beef, have not so acted yet.

All in all, our total beef exports account for about 10 percent of our
beef production in the United States.

So the suspension of sales by those major trading partners, which at
this point would account for roughly 60 to 70 percent of our exports is
going to have a market effect. Where the market will settle out, it\'s
too early to say.

We do know that this morning\'s futures market traded the limit down,
the daily limit on cattle is \$1.50 per 100 pounds. That limit can
increase over time, if the market stays limit down, and we\'ll see if
that transpires.

This is the time of year when cash market trading for cattle is very,
very light. We expected very little cash trading this week because of
the holidays, and so we probably really are not going to get a test on
what happens with cattle prices until we get into next week and we start
to see the normal resumption of cash market trading and see if the
futures continues to limit down.

**QUESTION:** I\'m sorry. You said 2002 was \$2.6 billion?

-more-

**DR. COLLINS**: \$2.6 billion. That accounts for about 10 percent of
our beef production.

**DR. DEHAVEN**: For the second part of your question on the relative
safety of meat cuts versus some process product like hot dogs, let me
refer you to Dr. Ken Petersen with our Food Safety and Inspection
Service.

**DR. PETERSEN:** Okay. Good morning. Regarding the safety of the meat,
as the Secretary indicated, this was what we call a Class 2 recall,
meaning that it has a remote probability of any health risk, and we took
this recall based on an abundance of caution.

The global experience with BSE of course is not new and the research
tells us, as well as our Harvard risk assessment, informs us that the
high-risk material\--brain, spinal cord and certain parts of the
intestines are the most infective tissues.

Those tissues did not make their way into the food supply. The meat from
this animal, again, guided by the Harvard risk assessment and the
international experience, tells us that the meat is safe and we have no
reason to believe that the BSE agent is in the meat.

Nevertheless, we recalled the product from this day to maintain the
confidence in the food supply.

**MS. HARRISON**: With that operator, let\'s go to the next question,
please.

**MODERATOR:** The next question comes from Gary Wergen.

**QUESTION:** Thank you. Good morning. Question. The ban on feed has
been in place since August of 1997. This is a third calf cow. The
window, it would seem, for her to have reserved these byproducts would
have been nonexistent or very \[audio goes out.\]

**MS. HARRISON : Gary.**

**MODERATOR:** One moment, ma\'am.

**\[inaudible**\] Kranac \[ph\], you may ask your question.

**QUESTION:** Yes. I have a couple basic questions and I have a request.
I\'m from CNN. My request would be that when you have several people
speaking on these telephone interviews, if you could spell their names
at the beginning and then have each person maybe say their name before
they speak.

**MS. HARRISON:** We\'ll do that.

**QUESTION:** Okay. Otherwise they all just kind a blend together
and\--and then I have a very basic question then. I\'ve heard this
supposedly tainted beef described in different ways. Is it suspected mad
cow, does it have suspected mad cow disease, or should we say apparent?
Or does it have it?

I know you\'re waiting for some confirmation from Britain.

-more-

**DR. DeHaven**: This is Dr. DeHaven with Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service. In answer to that question, the disease technically
is called bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. In lay terms,
that\'s also what\'s called mad cow disease. So we\'re talking about the
same disease.

That is bovine, b-o-v-i-n-e, spongiform, s-p-o-n-g-i-f-o-r-m, meaning a
spongy appearance, and then encephalopathy, e-n-c-e-p-h-a-l-o-p-a-t-h-y.
And I\'m going to do my spelling bee contest right after this call-in.
There\'s a reason why we refer to it as BSE. **\[LAUGHTER.\]**

So what we\'re saying, even though us bureaucrats do love our acronyms,
in this case it\'s very important that we have them.

So in layman\'s terms, that is now mad cow disease. We are calling this
a presumptive positive.

The reason we\'re doing is that because while we have extreme faith in
our national veterinary services laboratory, there are recognized,
internationally, some world reference laboratories, one of which is the
laboratory in Weybridge, England, and so we are sending duplicate
samples as well as some of our own samples that we ran tests on to this
laboratory in England for confirmatory testing.

It is our assumption and we are proceeding on the assumption that we
will get positive confirmation that this is positive, and we are
obviously actively engaged, now, in the investigation to try and locate
where all this animal might have been in, most importantly, the birth
herd and the location of the birth herd of this animal.

So we are saying that at this point we have a presumptive positive BSE
case in the United States.

**QUESTION:** Thank you.

**Dr. DEHAVEN**: Operator, I think we had a question coming from
somebody by the name of Gary and he got cut off. I\'m wondering if we
can go back to Gary.

**MS. HARRISON :** Gary Wergen.

**DR. DEHAVEN:** Gary Wergen.

**MODERATOR:** Yes; one moment, please.

Our next question come from Heather Rothman.

**QUESTION:** Hi. This is Heather Rothman from BNA. Just a quick
question. I\'m wondering why did we ban the Canadian beef due to their
one case but now we\'re saying that it\'s safe to go ahead and eat U.S.
beef.

**DR. DeHaven:** This is Dr. DeHaven, and let me for your benefit spell
my last name. It\'s capital d small e, capital H-a-v as in Victor -e-n.

Up until the single case of BSE in Canada, the international reaction to
a country reporting a case of BSE has been to completely shut off and
ban products of bovine origin from that country.

-more-

We were part and party to that as was virtually every other trading
country in the world, and we did so even though there was an
international standard based on science, that would suggest that there
are certain products that can safely be traded from a country that has
the disease.

Recognizing that with the Canadian situation, we then implemented a
process where we, as you know, are now allowing the importation of
minimal risk products, most notably beef products, meat products, cuts
of meat into the United States from Canada, and we have published a
proposed rule that would consider allowing the importation from Canada
into the U.S. of live animals, and we are currently in the middle of
comment process on that.

So, in summary, the import restrictions that existed before the
situation in Canada, were based on public health concerns or, excuse me,
public perception concerns and not based on the science.

We are working at changing that international standard, making that
standard based on the existing science, make it more consistent with the
current international standards as we also are currently working with
that international organization, the OIE, to update those existing
standards in hopes that we will again base trade in the future on the
science and not on public perception.

**QUESTION:** Thank you.

**DR. DEHAVEN:** Next question, Operator.

**MODERATOR:** Gary Wergen, please restate your question.

**QUESTION**: Can you hear me this time?

**DR. DEHAVEN:** We can; yes.

**QUESTION:** Great. Question. First off, you said the ban has been in
place on ruminant feeding since August of \'97, given the fact this is
apparently a third calf cow. It would seem the window would be very
small, if it existed at all, for her to have received byproducts from
animals before that.

Also is there an opportunity for regionalizing this situation to permit
cattle from, say, the Midwest, to be marketed on the world trade?

**DR. DEHAVEN:** For the first part of your question, I\'m going to turn
that over to Dr. Steve Sundlof from the Center for Veterinary Medicine
within the FDA. Steve?

**DR. SUNDLOF:** I\'ll spell my name too. It\'s Stephen, S-t-e-p-h-e-n.
Last name is Sundlof, S-u-n-d-l-o-f as in Frank.

The answer to your question is that we are looking into trying to trace
back, once we determine what the birth of herd was of this animal, to
try and trace back where they may have acquired their feed. We do
inspect every firm that handles what we\'re calling, what we\'re
referring to as prohibited material, but what that means is protein
that\'s derived from cattle or sheep or goats, basically.

-more-

We do inspect, again, we inspect all of these facilities once a year,
and we\'ll have to go back, and once we determine definitively what the
age of the animal was, when it might have gotten the feed, we can look
into that more closely.

I\'ll just tell you, though, that the compliance rate is extremely high,
it has been increasing since the ban went into place in 1997.

At that time we had about 75 percent of the firms were in compliance
with that, with our feed ban. Since then, we\'ve achieved a level of 99
percent compliance with the beef ban. So the compliance has improved
dramatically during that time.

**DR. DeHaven**: This is Dr. DeHaven again. To the second part of your
question about the possibility of regionalizing the United States for
trade purposes, certainly that is a process and a principle
well-recognized in international trade but it would be premature for us
to speculate on whether or not that would be possible with this
particular disease in this particular situation.

We need to know more about the epidemiology of this particular
situation, specifically, where did this animal come from, what were the
feed sources, where have animals moved out of this herd? et cetera. So
we would certainly consider regionalization if, upon completion of our
investigation, there would be information to suggest that any movement
that would be associated with this animal or this herd would be limited
to a certain part of the country, then that would be something that we
could consider at that time.

But it would be premature to speculate on whether or not that would be
possible at this point.

Operator, next question, please.

**MODERATOR:** Aaron Zentner \[ph\], you may ask your question.

**QUESTION:** Yeah. Aaron Zentner. I\'m with the Los Angeles Times.
First, a quick thing before I ask my question. It sounds like you are
unsure of the age of the calf. We don\'t know exactly how old this
animal was?

**DR. SUNDLOF:** What we know about the age of this animal is that she
was purchased as a 2-year-old in October of 2001. She was having her
first calf, which normally happens at about the age of two years. So in
the industry, she would be referred to as a springer. So if she was two
years old at the time of purchase in October of 2001, that would make
her roughly four to four and a half years old at the time of slaughter.

**QUESTION:** Can we go over\--thank you for that\--the recall today. Is
Verns\'s, the deboner, the 10,000 pounds in question, is that all of
their product on that day? In other words, can I just get a better idea
of what kind of net\--what kind of ground that net covers, to have that
10,000 pounds? What, you know, what days, what, you know, what\'s that
intended to capture?

**DR. DEHAVEN:** I have Dr. Petersen from Food Safety Inspection Service
answer that.

**DR. PETERSEN:** This is Dr. Kenneth Peterson, P-e-t-e-r-s-e-n, with
Food Safety Inspection Service.

-more-

As I indicated, the animal was one of twenty that completed inspection
on December 9th at Vern\'s Moses Lake Meats in Moses Lake, Washington.
Those twenty carcasses are what added up to the 10,410 pounds that were
recalled this morning at 1:30 a.m.

That\'s the entire day\'s production, and we know that on or about
December 11th, those 20 carcasses were shipped to a separate firm, and
as the Secretary indicated, I have enforcement and investigations
officers on site at four separate facilities where we believe may have
received this product, and one of which was\--one of them is the
location that we recalled last night. The second location is the one
that received the 20 carcasses and then there are two locations that
received the meat from that plant.

And those enforcement and investigations officers are, as we speak,
looking at production records to identify when the carcasses were
processed, what was done with them, and we\'re gathering that
information right now.

**QUESTION:** And so am I to conclude, that just because we have a
recall doesn\'t mean that we\'ve identified all the 10,000 pounds in
question. That\'s the work that has to go on now?

**DR. PETERSEN**: Well, we have recalled everything that was produced on
that day and as we always do with a recall, we know that products get
distributed, we go look for them and make decisions on what further
action we need to take on those products.

**DR. DEHAVEN:** Operator, next question, please.

**MODERATOR:** Our next question comes from Christie Flagg \[ph\].

**QUESTION:** Hi there. It\'s Christie Flagg from CNN. I have two
questions. The first one is are diseased cows, like this one you said
was paralyzed after delivering\--are diseased cows often sent to the
slaughterhouse? Is that standard practices?

And the second question is if the test results weren\'t back yet, why
was the meat sent to processing plants? Why not wait for the results?

**DR. DeHaven:** This is Dr. DeHaven. It\'s not uncommon practice for
animals that are no longer economically profitable, to send them to
slaughter. Whether this animal was down at the time that she actually
left the farm or had regained ambulation, and then went to slaughter, at
this point we don\'t honestly know that information. And I\'ll let Dr.
Petersen, again, from FSIS, address the inspection process that they go
through to ensure that these animals are appropriate for human
consumption, but, indeed, that is part of the inspection process. Dr.
Petersen.

**DR. PETERSEN:** This animal was received at the plant and our USDA
veterinarian did an ante mortem inspection on the animal. There was
nothing particularly remarkable about his findings. In fact they were
consistent with a birthing injury, and so he passed that animal for
slaughter, which is perfectly within the norms of how these things
happen. The animal was acceptable.

Then the animal went to slaughter and again it was inspected by the USDA
veterinarian, and his findings were entirely consistent with a birthing
injury, some inflammation and hemorrhage in the pelvic canal. That\'s
what he found, and nothing beyond that, and so, again, the animal, those
tissues were removed and the animal, as would be typically done, was
passed for slaughter.

-more-

This sample was collected as part of our routine surveillance program
and so there was no indication at the time, that there was any reason to
retain this animal pending the results from APHIS.

**QUESTION:** So a follow-up if I may. The animal was considered a
downer cow because of the birthing injury and all of those animals like
that are tested for mad cow just as standard operating procedures?

**DR. DEHAVEN:** That would be\--that is a correct statement.

**QUESTION:** Thank you.

**DR. DEHAVEN:** I should clarify that our surveillance system that we
have in place now, and those animals that we target for our surveillance
are those animals, first and foremost, that are showing signs of nervous
system disorder, but also we target animals that are nonambulatory, the
downed animals, if you will.

So this animal was picked up as part of our routine surveillance. Last
year we tested over 20,000. The exact number is 20,526 were tested last
year, our fiscal year 03. Obviously all of them were negative.

I think it\'s also important to point out, in this particular case,
consistent with a policy within the Food Inspection Service, Food Safety
Inspection Service, is that the risk materials, the specified risk
materials are those tissues that\--are the tissues that would be the
ones that would contain any infectious agent, were removed and did not
go into the human food chain.

So even though the carcass was not retained, only those tissues, the
meat, if you will, that is safe for human consumption, went into the
human food chain.

Operator, next question, please.

**MODERATOR:** Our next question comes from Don Franko.

**QUESTION:** Yes. I was trying to correlate whether or not the
department is considering other potential causes like they\'re doing
\[audio out\].

**DR. DEHAVEN:** I\'m sorry, Don. Could you repeat that.

**MODERATOR:** One moment.

**MS. HARRISON:** Operator, this Alisa Harrison. As I said before, this
briefing is for reporters, so we really want to try to keep the
questions from the reporters. So if we could go to the next question.
Thank you.

**MODERATOR:** Seth Bornstein, you may ask your question.

**QUESTION:** Yes. Seth Bornstein at Knight Ridder again. You said that
there was nine\--in 1997, there was 75 percent compliance on the feed
ban and now 99 percent. Doing the math, you\'re talking about the years
of suspicion being 1999 through 2001.

Can you tell us what the compliance was in those years, whether the
compliance was worse in certain regions, and what kind of enforcement
action was done in places that did not comply, found not in compliance?

-more-

**DR. DEHAVEN:** We\'ll have Steve Sundlof from FDA answer that
question.

**DR. SUNDLOF:** I don\'t have those figures in front of me. We do have
the information. If you would like, we can provide that information to
you.

**QUESTION:** Okay. Then can I follow up with a different question.
Other countries don\'t\--you put downed animals, regardless, into the
food chain, food supply. Are you looking at tightening the downed
animals, not putting them in the food supply? Even if it\'s not BSE,
there\'s some people already saying, well, why are we eating animals
that were sick? Can you comment on the nature of using downed animals in
the food supply.

**DR. DeHaven:** This is Dr. DeHaven. Let me give a preface comment and
then defer to Dr. Petersen again from Food Safety Inspection Service.

We feel that we\'ve had, from a BSE perspective, a good program in
place, again to protect public health and animal health as well,
recognizing that from downed animals, those tissues that would harbor an
infectious agent have been removed, don\'t go into the food chain. Any
that could end up in animal feed chain then would be subject to the feed
ban and those materials shouldn\'t be fed back to animals.

But let me defer to Dr. Petersen for a more substantive answer.

**DR. PETERSEN:** Okay. Dr. Petersen with FSIS. This animal, what we
know and from what we found at postmortem, does appear to be a very
acute injury, something that happened in a very short period of time,
and so that animal made its way to slaughter.

Whenever we have a downer animal, those are always inspected by a USDA
veterinarian before they go to slaughter. So I have my most
highly-trained individuals making the decisions on whether those animals
are fit for slaughter, and that\'s what happened in this case.

**MS. HARRISON:** Operator, this is Alisa again. We have time for two
more questions.

**MODERATOR:** Our next question comes from Dan Goldstein.

**QUESTION:** Hi. Dan Goldstein, Bloomberg News. This question also is
for the gentleman from the FDA. I was looking at the report from last
year from the GAO and how the FDA apparently missed several firms that
had been feeding back basically this high-risk feed that was used with
ground-up CNS elements in it, and that these firms had not been
taken\--no enforcement had been taken against them.

Dr. Sundlof, can you comment on that? Has the FDA improved after that
report?

**DR. SUNDLOF:** Yes. This is Steve Sundlof. Yeah. In fact we had
improved well before that report came out. I think that was May 2001. As
I indicated early on, the compliance rate was at\--right after the time
that the rule was passed in 1997, the compliance rate was around 75
percent. We recognized that that was not sufficient and that we needed
to do a lot to get it up to what we expected was a 100 percent
compliance with the rule.

-more-

We basically talked to GAO and told them, you know, where the problems
were and what we were trying to do to resolve those, and GAO wrote in
their report exactly what we told them basically.

There were some issues mainly regarding the database that was used to
collect the data, and that there were redundancies and some left-out
information. Those have all been taken care of now and we\'ve done I
think somewhere around\--there are 1826 firms currently that handle this
prohibited material. There are two firms, right now, that are not in
compliance.

**QUESTION:** What would you say is the compliance rate now? Is it above
90 percent? Where would you put it? How close are we to 100 percent?

**DR. SUNDLOF:** Well, divide two by 1,826 and---

**QUESTION:** So those are it?

**DR. SUNDLOF:** Yeah.

**QUESTION:** Those are the only two.

**DR. SUNDLOF:** Yes.

**MS. HARRISON:** Operator, we\'ll take our last question.

**MODERATOR:** Thank you. Our final question comes from Richard Cohen.

**QUESTION**: Hi. It\'s Richard Cowan from Reuters. Can you tell
us\--you say you\'re trying to find out what the birth herd is.

What kind of record keeping do you have on that? For example, will it be
on the tag of the animal? How long could it take to establish that and
could it have come from an area far from the second herd?

**DR. DeHaven:** This is Dr. DeHaven. You\'re technically asking us to
speculate on information that we are in the process of gathering, but
let me first of all, just in terms of background, we have a very
cooperative herd owner who has good records and they have made those
records available to us.

We know that this particular animal was purchased at one of two
locations and we are in the process of going back to those locations.
Again, we do know at least one of the livestock markets in question has
very good records.

The animal in question did have some identification on her, which should
hopefully help us in doing that traceback. We are hopeful that within
the next day or two we will have the information from those two
potential sources of this animal, and if everything goes perfectly, we
should be able to trace back to the birth herd within a day or two.

Having said that, again, we don\'t know what records we might be able to
find or not find, so it\'s be premature to speculate, but hopefully
we\'ll have as much relevant information in that regard within a matter
of a day or two.

-more-

**QUESTION:** And can you say what those other locations are, and once
you establish the birth herd location, do you then have to trace every
animal that was in that herd and possibly quarantine?

**DR. DEHAVEN:** All of these premises are located within the State of
Washington and for purposes of ensuring privacy of those individuals and
organizations, we\'ll not divulge that information at this point.

Once we have the birth herd, however, our epidemiological investigation
will extend to that herd. We\'ll want to know what animals have come
into that herd and from where, where animals have left that herd, what
the feeding practices were and all of the relevant information
associated with that.

**MS. HARRISON:** Thank you, Dr. DeHaven, Dr. Sundlof and Dr. Petersen.

As well as Dr. Collins. We have lots of doctors with us today. As the
Secretary said in her opening remarks, unless you hear otherwise from
us, we will not brief tomorrow, on Christmas day, but we will brief at
11:00 a.m. on Friday, and as she said that information, that reminder
will be going out here very shortly.

We wish everyone a merry Christmas, happy holidays, and we will talk to
you on Friday.

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