WASHINGTON, June 24 (UPI) -- Three senators Thursday called for an investigation into the Agriculture Department's secret decision to allow the import of banned Canadian beef.
Democratic senators Tom Daschle, S.D., Tom Harkin, Iowa, and Mark Dayton, Minn., in a letter to U.S. Department of Agriculture Inspector General Phyllis K. Fong, said they recently learned the agency dropped some of its safeguards in permitting the import of the banned beef that may have put consumers and ranchers at risk of mad cow disease.
It was recently revealed the agency over a seven-month period from 2003 to 2004 had allowed in millions of pounds of beef products from Canada that had previously been banned in May, 2003, when Canada had its first domestic case of mad cow disease.
The senators said sometime in the fall of 2003, the agency dropped its requirements that brains and spinal cords -- the most infectious components of diseased cows -- be removed from Canadian animals intended for U.S. importation and that facilities only slaughter animals destined for import into the United States.
These actions "increased the possibility that (mad cow disease) could be introduced into the United States," the senators wrote.
