Statement
August 24, 2004
Statement by Administrator Ron DeHaven of the Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service and Acting Administrator Barbara Masters of the Food
Safety and Inspection Service
"The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and the
Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) welcome the report and recommendations
from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) regarding our enhanced
bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) surveillance program.
The Office of the Inspector General's report made a total of 19 recommendations
on specific program issues. USDA agrees with the recommendations and
had already implemented several actions to address the recommendations
in the report. In most instances, while a specific action might have
been noted, the recommendations require routine monitoring or ongoing
action. Processes have begun for those ongoing activities that will
be conducted throughout the program. Four of the recommendations were
more specific, and have been completely addressed.
For more than a decade, APHIS has taken aggressive measures to prevent
the introduction and potential spread of BSE in the United States as
well as conduct a targeted surveillance system. We designed our enhanced
surveillance plan to augment those efforts by strengthening surveillance
in the high-risk cattle population and establishing limited surveillance
in the general population of older cattle.
APHIS continues to take proactive steps to further assure consumers,
trading partners, and industry that the risk of BSE in the United States
remains low. The objective of the new program is to obtain samples from
as many of the targeted high-risk adult cattle population as possible.
This intensive effort will allow us to more accurately estimate the
possible prevalence of BSE in the U.S. cattle population. In a little
more than two months, APHIS has sampled more than 42,600 high-risk cattle
with no positive test results.
It is important to note that OIG's report looks at both the previous
surveillance plan and the very early implementation phase of what will
be a 12- to 18-month enhanced program. Even though we are only a few
months into this enormous effort, both agencies have already taken steps
to implement many of OIG's recommendations.
For instance, the OIG report recommended that the agencies better communicate
the purpose of the enhanced BSE surveillance program and more completely
explain the objectives and assumptions, as well as the conclusions that
might appropriately be drawn from it. Accordingly, APHIS is currently
preparing a more detailed document to address specific issues raised
by the OIG audit and will be posting it to the APHIS web site for public
review by the end of August.
The OIG also pointed out that it is critical to the integrity of our
surveillance program that we obtain an adequate number of representative
samples from across the United States. We agree and are continuing to
take steps to ensure that this occurs. During the initial planning and
implementation of the surveillance program, APHIS Veterinary Services
employees worked closely with industry and State personnel to estimate
the number of samples that could be obtained in each State. From this
extensive work, we determined that we would get a good geographic representation
in the sampling process.
In order to ensure geographic representation in our sampling efforts,
APHIS created a database to analyze data at all levels and monitor the
number and geographical area of samples to provide an early warning
signal if we are receiving significantly fewer or more samples than
anticipated for any given State or region. We have designated an epidemiologist
with APHIS' Veterinary Services program to perform routine analysis
of this data and report directly to the BSE surveillance program manager,
who will immediately address any significant deviations in samples.
APHIS also plans to utilize a variety of outreach methods, including
meeting with key industry participants, conducting informational campaigns
geared toward producers, and consulting with State officials to ensure
sufficient samples are submitted.
In order to ensure that USDA's policy for sampling cattle ante-mortem
condemned at slaughter is consistently followed by field staff, both
APHIS and FSIS implemented measures to ensure a cross-check between
FSIS' ante-mortem condemned cattle statistics and APHIS' BSE surveillance
statistics. Both agencies issued instructions to field personnel that
clearly state the policy to sample all cattle condemned on ante-mortem
inspection, including how to properly collect, document, and ship samples
to APHIS' laboratory for analysis. Employees in both agencies also received
extensive training in the sample collection process.
APHIS also entered into an agreement with USDA's Agricultural Marketing
Service (AMS), which has vast experience establishing and evaluating
quality assurance programs, to audit the entire BSE surveillance program.
AMS expects to complete the initial audit by mid-September, with a follow-up
audit to be completed in the next 16 to 18 months. This program will
ensure consistency between agencies and among sample collectors, as
well as validating that the appropriate cattle are sampled.
Again, we appreciate OIG's report on the early phases of our BSE enhanced
surveillance program. We are committed to ensuring that our BSE surveillance
program yields accurate and reliable information for the general public,
for industry, and for our trading partners. Since the single case of
BSE was found in Washington State last December, we have worked hard
to be transparent in our prevention, surveillance, and eradication efforts,
with the objective of ensuring that we have the benefit of expertise
from around the country and the world. We are committed to making changes
wherever necessary to ensure the integrity of our efforts. We have greatly
appreciated the observations and recommendations of OIG and look forward
to continued cooperation with OIG in this regard.
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