07/21/06 USDA`s BSE Surveillance

USDA's BSE Surveillance Program. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. Yesterday USDA's Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Johanns announced a new BSE Surveillance program that corresponds to the extremely low prevalence of the disease in the U.S. JOHANNS: USDA will soon be transitioning to an on-going BSE surveillance program after having successfully achieving our goals with the enhanced surveillance program. The on-going surveillance program will involve sampling approximately 40, 000 animals each year. As with the enhanced surveillance the focus will be on cattle populations where the disease is most likely to be found and samples will be taken from a variety of locations. The new program will not only comply with the science-based international guidelines set forth by the World Animal Health organization (OIE), it will provide testing at a level ten times higher than the OIE recommended level. JOHANNS: This approach will maintain our ability to detect BSE even at the very, very low levels that the analysis shows that might exist in the United States. It will also enable us to identify any change in BSE prevalence if a change were to occur. USDA has an obligation to provide 30 days notice of the change to contractors who are performing the sampling and testing, so the earliest the new surveillance program would begin is late August. Now here's today's Washington Grange. (GRANGE) That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.