Testing the tests

The following commentary, which does not necessarily reflect the views of The Spokesman-Review’s editorial board, appeared Tuesday in the Yakima Herald-Republic.

With a confirmed third case of mad cow disease in Japan since the disease was first discovered on a Mabton dairy farm in December, skeptics are again questioning U.S. testing efforts. But before we get too far into the debate, let’s put things in perspective.

Japan tests all the estimated 1.2 million cows it slaughters each year.

The United States slaughters, on average, somewhere between 35 million and 42 million annually. Of necessity, we rely on testing of a statistical sampling of all those animals.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced in March that it will try to test somewhere between 200,000 and 270,000 animals over the next 12 months, compared with 20,543 cows reportedly sampled for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, in the prior year. Plans were to test about 40,000 this year before the mad cow scare in this country.

Obviously there’s a pretty good gap between a quarter of a million head here and 1.2 million in Japan and maybe the case can be argued for closing the gap with more domestic inspections. But the logistics, and expense, of testing all animals in this country is difficult, if not impossible.

Government and industry officials are convinced testing of every animal is not necessary given a “surveillance” program that focuses on testing animals with tell-tale symptoms.

While the number of animals slaughtered in Japan is a fraction of the millions processed in this country, that country still tested more than four times as many animals by testing them all and – relatively speaking anyway – found three times as much mad cow disease since the one Mabton case.

Actually, Japan has had 12 cases of mad cow overall. One might think it is a bit presumptuous to ban U.S. beef when incidents of mad cow disease seem more evident in Japanese herds. Japan imported some $1.4 billion worth of U.S. beef annually before the ban.

That could simply mean Japan has more of a problem than we do, or that the extent of testing in this country may still be lacking in identifying suspect animals.

Testing every animal in this country is not feasible. But Department of Agriculture officials must not take the statistical sampling method for granted either. Constant proof and assurance is necessary for American consumers, not to mention export markets that have been closed to U.S. beef imports since the brief local mad cow scare.