| December 31, 2004 | - and the Department of Agriculture said it would allow Canadian
beef back into the country.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| July 14, 2004 | - The inspector general of the USDA said that the agency's mad-cow surveillance system is weak, that the testing is not random, that it fails to require rendering plants to participate, and that it is based on flawed, unscientific assumptions.
| Source:
Seattle Times
|
| June 26, 2004 | - Another mad cow was apparently discovered somewhere in the United States, but the USDA refused to say where until more tests were completed.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| June 15, 2004 | - The USDA reclassified frozen French fries as "fresh vegetables."
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| April 10, 2004 | - The USDA rejected a request from a Kansas
beef company that asked for permission to test all its cattle for mad cow disease; the decision was announced by the department's undersecretary for marketing and regulation.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 4, 2004 | - The inspector general of the USDA opened a criminal investigation into whether the Washington State mad cow was falsely listed as a downer; the man who killed the cow, the man who took the cow to slaughter, and the owner of the slaughterhouse have all said that the cow was able to walk. A spokeswoman for the agency said that she could not "fathom" the notion that a high-ranking USDA official could have ordered the falsification, though she did not deny the charge but simply repeated that she could not "fathom" it.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 27, 2004 | - A large beef producer in Kansas applied to test all its cattle for mad cow disease so that it can resume exporting its beef to Japan. "The problem we're having now is that the U.S.D.A. is not wanting to do this," said the company's president. "They don't want to test. They don't want to recognize BSE is a problem. They are not going to allow anyone to test until they decide how or when. We believe that may be never."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 25, 2004 | - A scientist with the Department of Agriculture said that government researchers have been pressured by the office of Secretary Ann Veneman to approve
livestock and other products for import without taking proper safety precautions.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 10, 2004 | - The United States Department of Agriculture concluded its investigation into the mad cow outbreak.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 22, 2004 | - The worker at Vern's Moses Lake Meats who killed the Washington State mad cow insisted that the cow was not a downer. "I can't stand a government cover-up," said Dave Louthan. "Since we only had a few walkers on this trailer full of downers, we just killed her along with them. We took a brain sample from her head because the USDA gives up $10 per sample. If we would have unloaded her in the pens, we would have never caught the BSE. How many other walkers have BSE? We will never know."
| Source:
Columbia Basin Herald
|
| January 3, 2004 | - State officials in California said they were unable to reveal the ultimate destinations of a large quantity of tainted soup bones, tenderloins, and other cuts of meat included in the voluntary mad-cow recall, because doing so would violate the beef industry's proprietary interests. Consumers were told simply to ask their grocers if their meat was infected. "I do think that the USDA has erred in its judgment," said a health officer in Alameda County. "It has sacrificed the public's health in favor of the beef industry."
| Source:
San Francisco Chronicle
|
| December 31, 2003 | - In response to the mad-cow crisis, the United States Department of Agriculture banned the human consumption of cow brains, skulls, spinal cords, vertebral columns, eyes, and nerve tissue from cows older than 30 months. Downer cows may no longer be eaten by humans, though they will be boiled down and fed to chickens and pigs, and younger cow brains may still be eaten.
| Source:
Forbes, New York Times
|
| December 31, 2003 | -
USDA officials said that there was no need to test all cattle for mad cow disease before they are eaten.
| Source:
Newsday
|
| November 12, 2003 | - Environmentalists and consumer groups sued the Department of Agriculture to prevent companies from planting experimental
crops that have been engineered to produce pharmaceuticals; they said that planting in open fields risks spreading the modifications to other crops.
| Source:
Reuters
|
