WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 (UPI) -- Tons of Canadian beef brought into the United States before the border was closed to cattle importation in May due to a case of mad cow disease could still be sitting in freezers of meat distributing and processing companies, a former U.S. Department of Agriculture official told United Press International.
The USDA never took steps to address the safety of this beef or prevent it from being sold to restaurants and supermarkets.
On May 20, the USDA shut the U.S. border to Canadian cattle when officials announced a single cow in Alberta had tested positive for mad cow disease. The concern is humans can contract a fatal brain-wasting illness called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from eating infected beef.
Although the infected cow had gone to slaughter in January, the final test results were not obtained until May, so the delay in confirming the case left a five-month window, during which other mad-cow-infected cattle and beef products could have been shipped to U.S. purchasers.
Canadian officials have said their investigation concluded the Alberta cow was the only animal carrying the disease. However, the search was not launched until late May, by which time other infected cattle could have been slaughtered and sent south. Critics have said Canada's surveillance system for the disease tests so few animals that additional mad cow cases could have gone undetected.
Although Canadian beef usually is consumed within a few months of entering U.S. markets, meatpacking plants and distribution operations sometimes store imported meat for up to a year, said John Munsell, president and owner of Montana Quality Foods and Processing, a slaughterhouse, processor and distributor in Miles City.
"It's possible that there's still some Canadian meat in freezers in America that was produced prior to that May 20 date," Munsell told UPI.
Former USDA veterinarian Lester Friedlander said there "could be hundreds of tons" of Canadian beef in storage. "There are freezers all over this country. You can't imagine the amount of meat that's stored there," he told UPI.
Friedlander noted a major meatpacking plant in Pennsylvania that he inspected while employed with the USDA received "15-to-20 tractor-trailer loads of Canadian cows every week."
USDA spokeswoman Julie Quick said the agency never considered beef that had come across the border prior to May 20 a risk to consumers. The infected cow "never entered the food chain and there were no other cows that could have had (mad cow disease)," Quick told UPI.
The meat industry acknowledged the possibility some Canadian beef could still be in frozen storage, but dismissed the possibility it posed a danger to consumers.
"While technically there could be some (risk), it's not unsafe to begin with and the appreciable quantities are probably pretty small," Dan Murphy, a spokesman for the American Meat Institute, told UPI.
"It's really kind of a non-issue as far as our members are concerned," Murphy added.
Friedlander insisted the USDA would have been aware that some Canadian beef remained in storage. So he questioned why the agency would take the unprecedented step of closing the Canadian border but would not also try to prevent the stored meat from being consumed.
"This is a strong argument that the USDA has to get out of meat and poultry inspection," Friedlander said. "The consumers are the last ones to know what's going on," he said.
Michael Schwochert, a retired USDA veterinarian, shared Friedlander's concern Canadian beef could still be in storage, but he said it makes little difference in terms of risk to consumers because U.S. beef is just as likely to be infected with mad cow.
"I don't think there's any chance our beef is any cleaner than Canadian beef," Schwochert told UPI. The USDA's mad cow surveillance system is inadequate and "so full of holes, it would only be a fluke if we caught it here," he said. The U.S. has never detected a case of mad cow disease.
"The travesty at this point is that we have USDA saying we're doing everything we can ... but the truth is that we've got a big, big gaping hole in our own system," Schwochert said, referring to the agency's reluctance to implement rapid mad cow tests that are commonplace in the United Kingdom and Europe where many countries have detected mad cow in their herds. These tests would enable U.S. authorities to screen thousands of cattle per week or several times more than the 20,000 they currently screen in a year using a much slower test.
"Somebody should close those loopholes (to prevent the use of stored Canadian beef) but a bigger priority is to get the surveillance system up to date," he said.
The USDA reopened the border to certain Canadian beef products in August.
