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This is an incomplete description of the USDA's rationale. Although I agree that there shouldn't be a ban on private testing, the USDA's position is that BSE te

This is an incomplete description of the USDA's rationale. Although I agree that there shouldn't be a ban on private testing, the USDA's position is that BSE testing is ineffective at the time most cows are slaughtered, and would therefore provide an unwarranted impression of safety. > NOT A FOOD SAFETY TEST > BSE tests are not conducted on cuts of meat, but involve taking samples from the brain of a dead animal to see if the infectious agent is present. We know that the earliest point at which current tests can accurately detect BSE is 2-to-3 months before the animal begins to show symptoms. The time between initial infection and the appearance of symptoms is about 5 years. Since most cattle that go to slaughter in the United States are both young and clinically normal, testing all slaughter cattle for BSE might offer misleading assurances of safety to the public. > ... > Why doesn't USDA test every animal at slaughter? > There is currently no test to detect the disease in a live animal. BSE is confirmed by taking samples from the brain of an animal and testing to see if the infectious agent - the abnormal form of the prion protein - is present. The earliest point at which current tests can accurately detect BSE is 2 to 3 months before the animal begins to show symptoms, and the time between initial infection and the appearance of symptoms is about 5 years. Therefore, there is a long period of time during which current tests would not be able to detect the disease in an infected animal. > Since most cattle are slaughtered in the United States at a young age, they are in that period where tests would not be able to detect the disease if present. Testing all slaughter cattle for BSE could produce an exceedingly high rate of false negative test results and offer misleading assurances of the presence or absence of disease. > Simply put, the most effective way to detect BSE is not to test all animals, which could lead to false security, but to test those animals most likely to have the disease, which is the basis of USDA's current program. https://www.usda.gov/topics/animals/bse-surveillance-information-center https://www.usda.gov/topics/animals/bse-surveillance-informa...

s1artibartfast 5y ago
Thank you for the context!
rvba 5y ago
Sounds like a way to not test anything at all. I really try to stay away from politics, but sounds as something made by some bribed political appointment.
- jfengel 5y ago
  I'm curious why you'd say that. It sounds to me like a bureaucrat pointing out a scientific fact about the testing. I'm not an expert on testing for prions, but it doesn't surprise me that the test isn't good enough to pronounce an animal disease-free. And if that's correct, it's very much their purview to make it clear that advertising it as disease-free would be false. Most of the work at US agencies is done by career employees who are largely insulated from changes at the top. Politics certainly happens, but rarely at the level of individual decisions like this. Such agencies certainly aren't immune to regulatory capture, and it's conceivable that it's the case here. The scientists and bureaucrats who wrote that have likely worked with the cattle industry their whole careers, and have many personal contacts. Same for their bosses. But this memo turns on a specific technical point. If the tests aren't good enough, then they're not good enough. It wouldn't take regulatory capture for them to reach that conclusion, and this memo is exactly how they'd say it. It's also what it could sound like if they were being influenced by industry, but I'd say that the burden of proof is on somebody making that claim.
  - rvba 5y ago
    "Most new cars sold in USA have breaks that work. It doesnt make sense to test them since this would give the public a wrong impression that cars are safe". If 3,4 million new cars are sold in USA then probably 99% are generally ok. Because in current world generally most things are ok by default (custom software might be different, but off the shelf software generally works). But if you would be unlucky 1% where nobody checked the breaks... this would be 34 yhousand cars. And there is much more cattle raised and consumed so checking everything makes sense. Not checking anything because 99% will be ok is a pseudoscientific argument.
    - mannerheim 5y ago
throwaway_isms 5y ago
The rational middle ground would be to allow the private testing, but regulate any advertising or marketing of the testing and/or results on the basis it would likely confuse the consumers. If the interest in private testing magically disappears, then the intent is clear and might be a valuable factor for the consumers who might reasonably conclude the private company only had interest in performing testing they knew or should have known was immaterial for the purposes of marketing the testing to consumers as though it were material.
- mannerheim 5y ago
  It's unclear whether or not that's actually prohibited. It looks like Creekstone was the only beef processor who desired to test for BSE, and this was based on them wanting to export their beef to Japan. The rejection was made on this basis.
gojomo 5y ago
This is the same error the CDC & FDA made in the early stages of COVID, insisting on fussy rationed tests based on hand-wavy ideas about public misinterpretation. That error likely contributed to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths by hiding initial community spread for a month or more. Mass testing, even testing that's mostly at a stage unlikely to detect anything, and only occasionally on less-typical older animals, will provide new useful info. Waiting to test until an a old symptomatic cow "most likely to have the disease" shows up is closing the barn door after the mad cows have already escaped. The USDA's logic is dangerous like the bureaucratic rationing of COVID tests, early on. At crucial times in early 2020, no matter how suspicious a case/death, and how well it fit COVID symptoms, if the patient hadn't returned from Wuhan in the last few weeks, a test was prohibited. That's a "we don't want to know" policy.
- mannerheim 5y ago
  > Mass testing, even testing that's mostly at a stage unlikely to detect anything, and only occasionally on less-typical older animals, will provide new useful info. What useful information does it provide? Is there any evidence that testing can detect BSE before symptoms appear? Japan had tested clinically healthy cows until 2017, when they decided to limit testing to symptomatic cows.[0] > Waiting to test until an a old symptomatic cow "most likely to have the disease" shows up is closing the barn door after the mad cows have already escaped. Obviously it would be ideal to detect BSE in cows that are younger and not yet symptomatic. But if there's no evidence that this can be done, testing provides a false assurance of safety. Testing older, symptomatic cows will at least give an estimate as to the prevalence of BSE and an indication as to whether safety measures are working. It's much ado about nothing, anyway, since the US has only ever had four cases of vJCD from BSE, and in each case the individual had spent large amounts of time in countries known for having tainted beef. Perhaps dementia cases are misdiagnosed, but if there were a large danger of BSE/vCJD, one would expect to see those symptoms in a great deal of younger people. [0]: https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/japan-japan-lift-age-based-bse-testing-april-2017 https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/japan-japan-lift-age-based-bse...
  - gojomo 5y ago

s1artibartfast 5y ago

Thank you for the context!

rvba 5y ago

Sounds like a way to not test anything at all. I really try to stay away from politics, but sounds as something made by some bribed political appointment.

jfengel 5y ago
I'm curious why you'd say that. It sounds to me like a bureaucrat pointing out a scientific fact about the testing. I'm not an expert on testing for prions, but it doesn't surprise me that the test isn't good enough to pronounce an animal disease-free. And if that's correct, it's very much their purview to make it clear that advertising it as disease-free would be false. Most of the work at US agencies is done by career employees who are largely insulated from changes at the top. Politics certainly happens, but rarely at the level of individual decisions like this. Such agencies certainly aren't immune to regulatory capture, and it's conceivable that it's the case here. The scientists and bureaucrats who wrote that have likely worked with the cattle industry their whole careers, and have many personal contacts. Same for their bosses. But this memo turns on a specific technical point. If the tests aren't good enough, then they're not good enough. It wouldn't take regulatory capture for them to reach that conclusion, and this memo is exactly how they'd say it. It's also what it could sound like if they were being influenced by industry, but I'd say that the burden of proof is on somebody making that claim.
- rvba 5y ago
  "Most new cars sold in USA have breaks that work. It doesnt make sense to test them since this would give the public a wrong impression that cars are safe". If 3,4 million new cars are sold in USA then probably 99% are generally ok. Because in current world generally most things are ok by default (custom software might be different, but off the shelf software generally works). But if you would be unlucky 1% where nobody checked the breaks... this would be 34 yhousand cars. And there is much more cattle raised and consumed so checking everything makes sense. Not checking anything because 99% will be ok is a pseudoscientific argument.
  - mannerheim 5y ago

throwaway_isms 5y ago

The rational middle ground would be to allow the private testing, but regulate any advertising or marketing of the testing and/or results on the basis it would likely confuse the consumers. If the interest in private testing magically disappears, then the intent is clear and might be a valuable factor for the consumers who might reasonably conclude the private company only had interest in performing testing they knew or should have known was immaterial for the purposes of marketing the testing to consumers as though it were material.

mannerheim 5y ago
It's unclear whether or not that's actually prohibited. It looks like Creekstone was the only beef processor who desired to test for BSE, and this was based on them wanting to export their beef to Japan. The rejection was made on this basis.

gojomo 5y ago

This is the same error the CDC & FDA made in the early stages of COVID, insisting on fussy rationed tests based on hand-wavy ideas about public misinterpretation. That error likely contributed to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths by hiding initial community spread for a month or more. Mass testing, even testing that's mostly at a stage unlikely to detect anything, and only occasionally on less-typical older animals, will provide new useful info. Waiting to test until an a old symptomatic cow "most likely to have the disease" shows up is closing the barn door after the mad cows have already escaped. The USDA's logic is dangerous like the bureaucratic rationing of COVID tests, early on. At crucial times in early 2020, no matter how suspicious a case/death, and how well it fit COVID symptoms, if the patient hadn't returned from Wuhan in the last few weeks, a test was prohibited. That's a "we don't want to know" policy.

mannerheim 5y ago
> Mass testing, even testing that's mostly at a stage unlikely to detect anything, and only occasionally on less-typical older animals, will provide new useful info. What useful information does it provide? Is there any evidence that testing can detect BSE before symptoms appear? Japan had tested clinically healthy cows until 2017, when they decided to limit testing to symptomatic cows.[0] > Waiting to test until an a old symptomatic cow "most likely to have the disease" shows up is closing the barn door after the mad cows have already escaped. Obviously it would be ideal to detect BSE in cows that are younger and not yet symptomatic. But if there's no evidence that this can be done, testing provides a false assurance of safety. Testing older, symptomatic cows will at least give an estimate as to the prevalence of BSE and an indication as to whether safety measures are working. It's much ado about nothing, anyway, since the US has only ever had four cases of vJCD from BSE, and in each case the individual had spent large amounts of time in countries known for having tainted beef. Perhaps dementia cases are misdiagnosed, but if there were a large danger of BSE/vCJD, one would expect to see those symptoms in a great deal of younger people. [0]: https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/japan-japan-lift-age-based-bse-testing-april-2017 https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/japan-japan-lift-age-based-bse...
- gojomo 5y ago