Import Rule Seen Weakening Mad Cow Safeguards, Group Says

A proposed U.S. Department of Agriculture rule designed to boost beef exports would ease some mad cow disease import restrictions and weaken protections against the illness, a coalition of 31 mostly farm and rancher groups said. Under the rule, proposed in March, the USDA would adopt the same criteria used by the World Organization for Animal Health to identify a country’s risk status for mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy. This creates a loophole in which beef or cattle could be imported from nations that don’t have effective feed bans, the main U.S. safeguard against BSE, Bill Bullard, chief executive officer of R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America, said yesterday in an e-mail. “We were astounded that USDA would propose to further weaken our already weakened BSE protections,” Bullard said, a week after the agency announced that the nation’s first case of mad cow disease had been found in six years. The groups, which include ranchers in Kansas, Colorado, Nevada and other states along with the Center for Food Safety, have written to the USDA asking that the rule’s comment period, set to expire May 15, be extended for 60 days. Some trading partners have cited inconsistencies between U.S. and international standards as a reason to maintain restrictions on American beef imposed after the first U.S. mad-cow case in 2003. Bob McCan, vice president of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the largest U.S. rancher group, said the proposed rule should be made final without delay. The proposal is “science-based,” something the cattlemen have been pushing for since the first U.S. BSE case almost a decade ago, he said...more