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Testing Options for Mad Cow Said Limited

 

By LIBBY QUAID

The Associated Press

Wednesday, August 17, 2005; 8:04 PM

 

 

WASHINGTON -- The Agriculture Department acknowledged Wednesday that its

testing options for mad cow disease were limited in 9,200 cases despite its

effort to expand surveillance throughout the U.S. herd.

 

In those cases, only one type of test was used _ one that failed to detect

the disease in an infected Texas cow.

 

 

The department posted the information on its Web site because of an inquiry

from The Associated Press.

 

Conducted over the past 14 months, the tests have not been included in the

department's running tally of mad cow disease tests since last summer. That

total reached 439,126 on Wednesday.

 

" There's no secret program, " the department's chief veterinarian, John

Clifford, said in an interview. " There has been no hiding, I can assure you

of that. "

 

Officials intended to report the tests later in an annual report, Clifford

said.

 

These 9,200 cases were different because brain tissue samples were preserved

with formalin, which makes them suitable for only one type of test _

immunohistochemistry, or IHC.

 

In the Texas case, officials had declared the cow free of disease in

November after an IHC test came back negative. The department's inspector

general ordered an additional kind of test, which confirmed the animal was

infected.

 

Veterinarians in remote locations have used the preservative on tissue to

keep it from degrading on its way to the department's laboratory in Ames,

Iowa. Officials this year asked veterinarians to stop using preservative and

send fresh or chilled samples within 48 hours.

 

The department recently investigated a possible case of mad cow disease that

turned up in a preserved sample. Further testing ruled out the disease two

weeks ago.

 

Scientists used two additional tests _ rapid screening and Western blot _ to

help detect mad cow disease in the country's second confirmed case, in a

Texas cow in June. They used IHC and Western blot to confirm the first case,

in a Washington state cow in December 2003.

 

" The IHC test is still an excellent test, " Clifford said. " These

are not

simple tests, either. "

 

Clifford pointed out that scientists reran the IHC several times and got

conflicting results. That happened, too, with the Western blot test. Both

tests are accepted by international animal health officials.

 

The formal name for mad cow disease is bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or

BSE.

 

In humans, consuming meat products tainted with BSE is linked to a fatal

disorder called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The disease has killed

about 150 people, most of them in Britain, where there was an outbreak in

the 1980s and 1990s.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/17/AR2005081701635.\

html

 

 

 

a blinding flash

hotter than the sun

dead bodies lie across the path

the radiation colors the air

finishing one by one