- Hello, Jeff - I found the information. The cost is $30
per cow.
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- According to the article below, they are figuring in
$10 for the test kit, then salaries, lab fees, cost of grinding up and
delivering up cattle brain samples. I still think that even at $30 - 50
dollars each cow, the price is worth it.
-
- The industyy will lose billions if nothing is done and
testing is held at the bare - or less then bare minimum. In all, total
testing of each cow would add about 6 to 10 cents per pound. Well worth
the effort. There will always be those who want their beef.
-
- I like the last sentence:
-
- "Furthermore, why not reconsider the use of animals
as human food?"
-
- Patty
-
- Mad-Cow Testing on Trial
- Should U.S. Start to Screen Every Last Cow,
as in Japan?
- 'A Negligible Cost Increase'
-
- By Thomas M. Burton and Martin Fackler
- Wall Street Journal
- 1-2-4
-
- When mad-cow disease struck, nations across Europe struck
back with comprehensive cattle-testing. So did Japan. Is the U.S. next?
-
- The grand total to test about 10 million cows in the
U.S. would be $300 to $500 million a year. Considering that Americans spend
more than $50 billion on beef annually, that would add between six cents
and 10 cents per pound.
-
- It wouldn't be hard: Four companies already offer test
kits that can, within four hours, tell if a slaughtered cow carries bovine
spongiform encephalopathy, otherwise known as BSE or mad-cow disease. It
wouldn't cost much: Test kits cost about $10 a pop.
-
- Add in salaries of lab technicians, the cost of grinding
up and delivering cattle brain samples for testing, and the tab would be
$30 to $50 per animal, industry experts say. The average U.S. cow slaughtered
for food yields meat with a retail value of $1,636.
-
- Each year in the U.S., about 35 million cattle are slaughtered.
About 10 million of these animals -- those over 30 months of age -- would
be tested for BSE if the U.S. were to adopt European standards, because
age is associated with infection.
-
- The grand total to test about 10 million cows in the
U.S. would be $300 to $500 million a year. Considering that Americans spend
more than $50 billion on beef annually, that would add between six cents
and 10 cents per pound.
-
- "Cost should not be a prohibitive factor,"
says Scott McKinlay, president of InPro Biotechnology Inc., South San Francisco,
Calif., a test-kit maker founded by Nobel Prize-winning researcher Stanley
B. Prusiner.
-
- "Look at Canada as an example," says Mr. McKinlay.
"They have suffered about a $600 million loss already" in lost
beef exports and consumption.
-
- Japan has the most extensive testing system in the world.
All slaughtered cattle there are tested, no matter the age. "Public
opinion supports the policy of testing every cow," says Kazuki Ikeda,
an official in the Agriculture Ministry's Department of Meat and Poultry.
"For a relatively small cost, consumers feel their safety is guaranteed."
-
- Still, even some testing-firm officials believe Japan's
program is excessive, largely because the brains of younger cattle are
extremely unlikely to contain infectious prions, the malformed proteins
that carry the disease.
-
- "I like to sell test kits, but [Japan's approach
is] insane," says Markus Moser, co-chief executive of Zurich testing
firm Prionics AG. Throughout the continental European Union, countries
test all cattle over 30 months that are slaughtered; Germany includes all
over 24 months.
-
- The American approach has been to test only about 20,000
cattle annually, roughly one in every 1,700 slaughtered. The animals chosen
for testing are "downer" cattle, those too ill or lame to walk
into the slaughterhouse, and are subjected to an "immuno-histochemistry"
test that takes at least five days for results.
-
- The Washington State Holstein that was tested and found
to harbor mad-cow disease was a downer, and its meat entered the food chain
before the testing was complete -- an occurrence that might have happened
any time under regulations then in effect. Tighter U.S. regulations announced
this week prohibit the slaughter of downer cattle for food. But testing
for BSE will continue to focus on downer cattle, presumably because they
are likelier to carry the disease.
-
- U.S. industry and government executives say they see
no great need for wider testing. But others point out that symptomless
cattle can carry the disease. Indeed, among 8.5 million older cattle tested
in Europe in 2001, tests found 2,142 carried BSE.
-
- In the European experience so far, testing all older
cattle has cost roughly $30 to $50 per cow. In Japan, it is about $31 per
cow. Japan uses test kits made by Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc. of Hercules,
Calif., and Ireland's Enfer Scientific, which licenses its test to Abbott
Laboratories, North Chicago, Ill.
-
- "In Switzerland and the rest of Europe, it is a
negligible cost increase, a few cents in the cost of beef," says Prionics's
Dr. Moser.
-
- After a single Alberta cow tested positive for BSE in
May, Canadian officials tested the herds that had come in contact with
the animal. The Canadian government has stopped short of instituting a
European-style testing program, but Bruno Oesch, co-CEO of Prionics, says
Canada now plans a more extensive surveillance system of approximately
50,000 tests annually. Canadian officials didn't respond to calls for comment.
-
- Dr. Oesch predicts that the minimum probable U.S. program
"is going to be a surveillance program of half a million animals."
The U.S. Agriculture Department says it's too early to say.
-
- Because of its slowness, the U.S.'s current immuno-histochemistry
test wouldn't be practical for widespread use. Various firms have created
faster tests. But before any could be used in the U.S., the tests must
first be approved by the Agriculture Department. That hasn't happened yet.
Following the Canadian outbreak, Abbott sent its test data to the department
in October, says Jim Koziarz, Abbott's head of diagnostics research. "The
Canadian experience provided an impetus," he says.
-
- Any testing program would need government vigilance to
ensure that labs employ trained personnel and that tests minimize the problem
of false positives, a problem that initially plagued German cattle testers.
-
- Three years ago, German lab technicians found 100 positives
among 200 brain samples from cattle -- four times as many BSE cases as
were then extant in Germany. The findings, from kits made by Bio-Rad, in
some cases led to quarantining farms and slaughterhouses. But subsequent
tests discovered it had been a false alarm. Bio-Rad says the problem was
with the labs, and testing industry executives generally say the false-positive
problem, while already small, is getting smaller.
-
- "In Germany, anybody who had a lab could do testing,"
says Dr. Oesch. "In Italy, they took tight control and only allowed
test reading in government labs. Now, BSE isn't a topic there anymore."
-
- Industry and U.S. laboratory estimates suggest the false-positive
rate is about 1 in 10,000 with some of the tests. This would mean 1,000
cattle out of 10 million tested could result in false positives. When that
happens, the next step is to "test the test" with the slower
test used by the Agriculture Department. Colorado State University's Veterinary
Diagnostic Laboratory uses the same rapid test to check deer and elk for
"chronic wasting disease," another prion disease like BSE.
-
- Barbara Powers, director of the Colorado State lab, says
the false-positive problem is "very, very rare" -- about 1 in
10,000 -- and the lab in those instances simply verifies the result using
the current, slower test.
-
- A potentially more serious problem: false negatives.
Prions can be present elsewhere in younger animals before traveling to
their brains. There is currently no practical way of rooting out all such
cases, but these are believed to be extremely rare and far less likely
to infect people who eat them.
-
- There are "differences of 10 million-fold in infectivity"
between such an early-stage animal and the far more infectious, older animals
with prions in the brain, Dr. Moser says.
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- Mindfully.org note:
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- We ask why should they be get a seal of approval just
by testing every animal in the US? Why not adopt a standard of raising
animals that ensures them to be 100% healthier without feeding the unfortunate
animals living in overcrowded conditions being fed pesticide-ridden food
and being shot up with growth hormones and antibiotics? Furthermore, why
not reconsider the use of animals as human food?
-
- http://www.mindfully.org/Food/2004/Mad-Cow-Testing-Costs2jan04.htm
-
-
- Patricia A. Doyle, PhD
- Please visit my "Emerging Diseases" message
board at: http://www.clickitnews.com/ubbthreads/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=emergingdiseases
- Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa
- Go with God and in Good Health
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