USDA Creates Bill to Compell Japan to Buy Our Beef, Lies to Congress about Mad Cow

Lies highlighted in bold italics

S. Res. 452

RESOLUTION

Supporting increased market access for exports of United States beef and beef products to Japan.

Whereas, in 2003, Japan was the largest market for United States beef, with exports valued at $1,400,000,000;

Whereas, after the discovery of 1 Canadian-born cow infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) disease in the State of Washington in December of 2003, Japan closed its market to United States beef, and still restricts access to a large number of safe United States beef products;

Whereas for years the Government of the United States has developed and implemented a multilayered system of interlocking safeguards to ensure the safety of United States beef, and after the 2003 discovery, the United States implemented further safeguards to ensure beef safety;

Whereas a 2006 study by the United States Department of Agriculture found that BSE was virtually nonexistent in the United States; ( I would like to see a copy of this "study")

Whereas the internationally recognized standard-setting body, the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), has classified the United States as a controlled risk country for BSE, which means that United States beef is safe for export and consumption. (Oh yes and we believe anything the WHO has to say......we KNOW they would never lie to U.S. (not.)

Full text; http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=sr111-452

McDonalds Pulls Out of Iceland - Will Consumers Survive Big Mac Attacks?

Click on title above to read more....

Japan Suspends Beef Imports from Tyson / Finds Banned Cattle-parts in Carcasses / Nice Going USDA

October 10, 2009

Japan suspends beef imports from US plant

By MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press Writer

Japan suspended beef shipments from an American meatpacker Saturday over its failure to remove cattle parts banned under a bilateral agreement, as officials here raised concerns about U.S. safeguards against mad cow disease.

Japanese quarantine inspectors found bovine spinal columns in one of 732 boxes shipped from Tyson Fresh Meats Inc., which arrived in Japan in late September, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said. The box contained 35 pounds (16 kilograms) of chilled short loin with spinal bones, which were not released commercially, said ministry official Goshi Nakata.

The suspension only affects Tyson's factory in Lexington, Nebraska, one of 46 meatpacking plants approved to export beef to Japan.

It was the second suspension for the Lexington factory, Nakata said. Japan slapped a four-month ban on beef shipments from the same plant in February 2007 after finding two boxes of beef lacking verifications to show they came from cattle that met Japan's safety standards.

"It's extremely regrettable," said Agriculture Minister Hirotaka Akamatsu, who has just returned from meetings in Washington with U.S. trade and farm officials. "We need to closely examine if it was just a careless mistake or there is a systematic problem."

Japan's new ruling Democratic Party has proposed a tough response to any violation to a bilateral safety agreement, including a blanket ban on U.S. beef shipments.

The Japanese ministry has asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate how the box containing the banned parts ended up in Japan.

Japan will await results of a U.S. investigation to determine the penalty for the Tyson factory, the ministry said.

Gary Mickelson, a spokesman for Tyson, called the delivery of that box a mix-up. He said the Springdale, Ark.-based company is investigating it and will work with the Agriculture Department to "take corrective measures" so the plant can start supplying Japanese customers again.

He said Tyson has seven other beef plants approved to ship meat to Japan. It was not immediately clear how much meat Tyson ships to Japan, but Mickelson said it was not among its top five international markets in 2008.

The problem surfaced just one day after U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk urged Akamatsu on Thursday to lower Japan's strict safety standards in line with international standards.

"It was bad timing," said another Japanese agricultural official, Yusuke Hirata, referring to the Tyson shipment. "I hope the U.S. side would see it as an embarrassment and try to make an improvement."

Washington has repeatedly criticized Japan for its tough import restrictions, which authorities say have no scientific basis.

Under the bilateral trade agreement, U.S. exporters must remove spinal columns, brain tissue and other parts considered linked to mad cow disease. U.S. beef shipments to Japan must also come only from cattle age 20 months or younger, which are believed to pose less of a risk.

U.S. officials have urged Japan to allow imports of beef from cattle aged at least up to 30 months, a widely used safety standard elsewhere, and possibly scrap age restrictions.

"We don't have a deadline, and we have not made any decisions as to whether we should change any safety standards," Hirata said. He said, however, a decision could be further delayed "if the latest incident was found to have involved serious violations."

Japan banned all U.S. beef imports in 2003 after the first case of mad cow disease was discovered in the United States. Japan resumed buying American beef in 2006 after the bilateral trade agreement setting new safety standards.

Mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is a degenerative nerve disease in cattle. In humans, eating meat products contaminated with the illness is linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare and fatal malady.


http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewContent.act?clipid=376091587&mode=cnc&tag=3.5721%3Ficx_id%3D20091010-pf1onfile-V804

Rushed USDA Changes Could Endanger Food Supply

Rushed USDA Changes Could Endanger Food Supply
Dear MuleKist,

UCS scientists and independent experts agree that if food staples such as corn and rice are engineered to produce drugs and other chemicals, they are very likely to contaminate the food supply and pose serious human health and environmental risks for years to come.

Now, as the clock winds down on the current administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has joined the ranks of federal agencies rushing through new regulations that weaken protections for human health and the environment. The agency’s proposed regulations could significantly weaken restrictions on genetically engineered crops that produce pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals—greatly increasing the likelihood that vaccines, hormones, plastics, and other substances could end up in our nation’s food supply. Write to the USDA today and demand stronger—not weaker—regulations for these dangerous crops!

Sincerely,

Jennifer Palembas
Outreach Coordinator
Food & Environment Program
Union of Concerned Scientists



Contact the USDA today by submitting the comments below
I am writing to oppose the USDA’s proposed regulations for oversight of genetically engineered crops that produce drugs and industrial chemicals (pharma crops).

The USDA is going in the wrong direction on pharma crops. Rather than weaken current regulations, the department should protect the food supply from pharma crops—by instituting a ban on the outdoor production of these drugs and industrial chemicals in crops that are also human food staples, like corn and rice.

Pharma crop regulations are already too weak; yet this proposal will remove the mandatory requirements that are currently in place and instead allow agency officials wide discretion to declare certain pharma crop substances as low risk and therefore subject to minimal control.

I urge you to withdraw these weaker pharma crop regulations and instead adopt a ban on the outdoor production of these substances in food crops. This is the only way to adequately protect the food supply.


Take Action
Write today to tell the USDA to strengthen pharma crop oversight.


Tell A Friend
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Donate
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Mad Cow Horse Discovered in UpState NY!

Is this what a horse looks like with "Mad Cow" or is it just a "New York Cow Horse?" Hard to tell these days with all them mutant prions going around taking new shape and form in every species they infect.

Had ya going there a minute, didnt I, USDA? lol

Canada Close to Live Testing Methods

Canadian and German scientists have discovered that a single protein can accurately distinguish between healthy cows and those with mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). This finding should hopefully lead to the development of a test for diagnosing BSE in live cattle, says lead researcher David Knox from the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg.

First detected in the UK in 1985, BSE is a degenerative neurological disease that affects cows. Like scrapie in sheep and Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (CJD) in humans, BSE is a type of a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) disease, caused by the build-up in the brain of an abnormal protein known as a prion.

Following the BSE epidemic among UK cows in the 1980s and 1990s and the discovery that humans could contract the so-called new variant CJD by eating BSE-infected meat, many countries implemented monitoring programmes to detect cows with BSE. This usually involves testing for the presence of prions in the brains of all cows older than a certain age or showing possible signs of BSE.

Understandably, this kind of test can only be conducted after the cows have been killed, which is sort of shutting the stable door after the cow has bolted. In contrast, a test that could detect BSE in live cows would permit the routine testing of all cattle. This would allow any BSE outbreak to be detected at an earlier stage and give much greater confidence that a country's cow population was entirely free of BSE.

Unfortunately, although prions are found at high concentrations in brains and spinal cords, they're present at much lower concentrations in easily testable bodily fluids such as cerebrospinal fluid, blood and urine. This has helped to stymie attempts to develop just such a live test.

But detecting prions is not the only way to diagnose BSE. Like any other disease, BSE induces a whole host of biochemical changes in infected cows, which should be reflected in the presence of characteristic protein biomakers in their bodily fluids. So Knox and his colleagues set out to find these biomarkers.

Using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, they searched for proteins present at different concentrations in urine from four healthy and four BSE-infected cows. Finding that 56 of the over 1,300 protein spots on each of the subsequent gels were present at different concentrations in the two groups, Knox and his colleagues then used a range of multivariate statistical techniques to determine which spots were best at distinguishing between healthy and infected cows.

This uncovered a single protein spot that was able to distinguish between the two groups with perfect accuracy. Analysing this protein using mass spectrometry revealed it to be the glycoprotein clusterin, which is commonly found in a wide range of different biological tissues. Unfortunately, high concentrations of clusterin have already been linked to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, suggesting that it might not make a particularly specific BSE biomarker.

However, Knox and his team actually detected two versions of clusterin in cow urine, perhaps reflecting two different post-translational modifications of the protein, and only one of these versions was able to distinguish between the healthy and infected groups. This raises the possibility that this particular version of clusterin could make a more accurate biomarker.

Furthermore, by analysing proteins in the cow urine at six different times during the course of the BSE infection, Knox and his team discovered that changes in the concentrations of 16 of the protein spots accurately matched the progression of the disease.

'Our work shows that it is possible to identify biomarkers in urine that could be useful in the diagnosis and monitoring of disease progression in BSE,' says Knox. In addition to developing a live BSE test, Knox hopes that this work will lead to live tests for other TSE diseases, including CJD


Click on title above for article;
http://www.separationsnow.com/coi/cda/detail.cda?id=19656&type=Feature&chId=2&page=1

FDA 2 Say No Label 4 "FrankenMeat?"

If the Wall Street bailout was hard to swallow, the government is preparing a Halloween trick that just may be impossible to stomach.

The Food and Drug Administration is opening the way for grocery stores to sell food made from genetically engineered animals. And the agency is proposing that these products, called “Frankenfoods” by some, be sold to you without your knowledge.

Sign our online petition demanding that food from genetically engineered animals be labeled. We have the right to know what we are eating!

Genetically engineered animals are not a far-off, exotic concept. It’s happening right now. Goats are engineered with spider genes to produce silk in their milk. And pigs carry mouse and bacterial DNA to improve their digestion.

The jury is still out on whether food from these animals is safe for humans or the environment. And the ethics of such changes have yet to be considered.

The FDA says they will conduct a safety review before these foods can be sold for human consumption. But consumers won’t know if they’re buying genetically engineered food, because the agency isn’t going to require a label.

We know what’s in the can of soup we buy because the label tells us. Shouldn’t we know if the meat we buy comes from a pig with another animal’s genes, or whether our milk has insect DNA in it?

Sign our petition and show the FDA that Americans want to know what’s in their food!

We have until Nov. 18 to collect signatures. Please forward this email on to others so they can sign too. Let’s stop this Halloween trick before it starts.

Sincerely,
Jean Halloran
NotInMyFood.org
A project of Consumers Union
101 Truman Ave.
Yonkers, NY 10703

Duh,.."New" USDA Reg. for BSE a "US-Duh-A" No-Brainer

I stumbled upon this old "new" USDA reg established in 2003 but I got such a kick out of its "logic" that I just had to share.....

Product Holding; USDA is publishing a notice (PDF) announcing that FSIS inspectors are no longer marking cattle tested for BSE as "inspected and passed" until confirmation is received that the cattle have, in fact, tested negative for BSE. FSIS will be issuing a directive to inspection program personnel outlining this policy.

Apparently, prior to the enactment of this "new" reg, our USDuhA inspectors were "certifying" meat as "passed" inspection before the test results were in!

Amazing.

Click title above for full article from the USDA website. http://www.fsis.usda.gov/news_&_events/nr_010804_01/index.asp