- An interim final rule declaring that the Specified Risk Materials, the skull, brain, trigeminal ganglia, eyes, vertebral column, spinal cord and dorsal root ganglia of cattle 30 months of age or older, and the small intestine of all cattle are prohibited in the food supply. (Tonsils were already excluded). These prohibitions will be effective immediately upon publication in the Federal Register.
- An interim final rule expanding on the prohibition of central nervous system tissues in advanced meat recovery products.
- A final rule to prohibit air injection stunning.
- A notice announcing that FSIS inspectors will not mark ambulatory cattle that have been targeted for BSE surveillance testing as "inspected and passed" until negative test results are obtained.
Also, because USDA may need quick turnaround for its BSE surveillance program, USDA will begin accepting license applications for BSE tests. USDA's Center for Veterinary Biologics (CVB) has heretofore been accepting and reviewing data from companies that have various rapid tests, but CVB has not formally accepted applications up to this point. Currently, the only BSE test approved for use by USDA is immunohistochemistry, or the IHC test. Internationally, this is the gold-standard procedure that USDA's National Veterinary Services Laboratories used to confirm the BSE detection in December.
Confirmatory testing of a presumptive BSE positive on any of these rapid screening tests ultimately approved for use would be made by USDA's National Veterinary Services Laboratories in Ames, Iowa, using the gold-standard IHC test.
Specific information on how companies can apply for BSE diagnostic kit licensing is posted on USDA's website at www.usda.gov.
In regard to today's operational update, USDA will soon begin to remove a limited number of cows from the index herd in Mabton, Washington. At this time, USDA will most likely remove approximately 130 animals from this herd that contains approximately 4,000 dairy cows.
USDA will take these animals because the ongoing epidemiological investigation has determined that some of these animals were herd mates of the BSE-affected animal in Canada. This means that these animals were possibly exposed to the same feed source as the BSE-positive animal.
It's important to note that even at the height of the BSE issues in Europe, it was rare to have more than one or two cattle that were affected in a single herd. However, due to an abundance of caution, USDA believes euthanizing these animals that may have been in the index animal's birth herd is the appropriate action to take at this time As the epidemiological investigation continues, it is possible that USDA may depopulate other animals from the index herd; the other herd in Mattawa, Washington, currently under a Washington State hold order; or other cattle determined to be part of the index animal's birth herd.
To summarize:
Of the 81 cows that came from Canada with the positive cow:
- One is the positive cow
- Two are under a hold order at a premises in Mattawa
- USDA believes 7 may have gone to another dairy and is working to determine if those animals are still there
- Nine are in the index herd
- Potentially some of the remaining cows that came in that shipment are on the index premises, but at this time the identity of these animals has not been confirmed
- The USDA inventory of this producer's cattle located 129 of these cattle of interest-they remain on the farm and these are the ones we are going to depopulate.
- Computer records of 110 of these cattle demonstrated that they have already been culled from the herd. We continue to conduct trace-outs of these animals.
- The remaining 19 did not have records indicating culling and they were not found on the USDA inventory. We are looking through the herd for the identity of these 19.
