WASHINGTON, May 15 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture has failed to supply the number of cows exhibiting signs of a brain disorder it has tested for mad cow disease to Japanese authorities, who requested the information more than four months ago, an official told United Press International.
The failure to provide the information comes amid the recent revelation USDA officials did not test an animal displaying brain disorder symptoms consistent with mad cow disease at a Texas plant in April.
The lack of this data also could hamper ongoing negations aimed at reopening Japan's borders to U.S. beef. Those negotiations are slated to gear up again next week in Tokyo. Japan has resisted reopening its borders since shutting them in December, after a cow infected with mad cow disease was detected in Washington state.
Animals with brain disorder or central nervous system symptoms are considered the most likely to be infected with mad cow disease -- the reason the USDA's official policy is to test all such animals.
That also is the reason Japanese authorities have requested the information on the CNS cows.
"Our technical people are asking for that (because) if you tested more of these animals, it's a more accurate survey" of whether the herds are infected, a Japanese official, who requested anonymity, told UPI.
Although the Japanese government requested this information in January, the official said the USDA has not yet provided any substantial statistics.
"We received a one-page document" showing the number of dead and downer cows -- those unable to stand -- that have been tested, the official said. But there is no information on the number of tested animals with CNS signs, he added.
The USDA has also failed to address other questions about how the agency is ensuring mad cow disease does not infect U.S. herds, the official said. This has created a sense of frustration among Japanese authorities.
"We ask many questions to them, but they answered quite few," the official said. When the USDA does provide information "it's only (a) partial answer -- we don't receive (a) full answer," he said. "The Japanese people are frustrated" by this, he added.
J.B. Penn, USDA's undersecretary for farm and foreign agricultural services, who has been heavily involved in the negotiations with Japan, declined repeated requests from UPI for comment.
USDA spokesman Wayne Baggett told UPI, "In light of negotiations and everything, we don't really want to respond to some kind of anonymous questions ... If you have some specific allegations by some specific officials we will consider answering them or getting answers for them, but otherwise we don't want to do that interview."
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., wrote a letter to Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman on Thursday, saying he was concerned USDA officials have told the House Committee on Government Reform the agency does not keep track of how many CNS cows it tests for mad cow disease.
Waxman, ranking Democrat on the committee, noted that USDA official Ronald Hicks wrote in a March 22 letter to the committee the agency's Food Safety and Inspection Service had condemned from 201 to 249 cattle for CNS signs in each of the past five years. But, Hicks added, "It is not possible to determine, from the data we currently collect, how many of these cattle were tested."
Waxman wrote, "It thus appears that not only does USDA not routinely track the gap between the number of condemned and tested cattle, but that USDA could not even calculate this gap when requested to do so by Congress."
USDA spokesman Jim Rogers said the agency would have to read Waxman's letter thoroughly before it could issue a substantial response.
Last month, fresh from returning from talks with Japanese officials in Tokyo, Penn told reporters the agency's "hope" and "expectation" was Japan would open its borders by the end of summer, after a series of meetings the two nations have agreed to hold beginning May 18.
The Japanese official, however, said Penn's enthusiasm may be premature.
"At this moment, Japan's position is the same as before," the official said, meaning the government still is adhering to its demands for testing all U.S. cattle exported to the country. The official noted a recent survey showing 90 percent of Japanese consumers support this position.
This is an issue of grave concern to Japanese consumers, another official told UPI. He noted that, in 2001, when the first case of mad cow was detected in Japan, "Japanese consumers were very frightened. Consumption of beef dropped dramatically, by 70 percent."
The concern is humans can contract an incurable, fatal brain disorder called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from eating meat infected with the mad cow pathogen.
The first official said the scheduled technical meetings were a positive step, because now "we could get some information we couldn't get before."
He noted, however, that Japanese officials took issue with some of Penn's other statements to reporters -- for example, he appeared to downplay some of their most serious concerns, including the worry that cows under 30 months old can carry the disease and therefore should be tested. Two of Japan's young cows --ages 21 and 23 months -- have tested positive within the past year for mad cow, otherwise known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
USDA plans to launch an expanded surveillance plan beginning in June, but it will involve only testing cows 30 months and older.
Referring to Japan's young cows that tested positive, Penn told reporters, "the main BSE testing laboratory in Weybridge, England, won't confirm that those two animals had BSE."
A Japanese official, however, said that is not the full story. Weybridge was sent a sample of tissue that was subject only to an immunohistochemistry test -- and Japanese officials already knew its results were negative.
Another type of test, called Western blot, was positive and by Japanese regulations a positive on either IHC or Western blot is considered positive for mad cow. The USDA plans to use the Western blot as a confirmatory test in its expanded surveillance program.
Japan's laboratory is considered one of the world's foremost authorities in mad cow disease testing and one of only three reference labs in the world recognized by the World Organization for Animal Health in Paris. The other two reference labs are Weybridge and a lab in Switzerland.
The official noted Penn was aware of the Western blot results because a Japanese official had relayed the information to a person in his office.
The anonymous official accused the USDA of "trying to lower Japan's credibility" by making statements downplaying or dismissing its concerns in the mass media. He also said the agency appears to be doing the bidding of big meat industry. "For some reason, this government can't do anything the big meat industry (opposes)," he said.
Penn also emphasized the feed ban had been strengthened to ensure there was no spread of the disease among U.S. herds. But the Japanese official said his country had been requesting information supporting the agency's contention and so far those questions have not been answered.
The agency also has not responded to Japan's inquiries regarding the status of investigations into whether the Washington state cow was a downer, the official said. The House Government Reform Committee and the USDA's Office of Inspector General have opened investigations into the matter.
Whether the Washington cow was a downer is central to the USDA's surveillance program because it has focused predominantly on downer animals and tested few, if any, healthy animals. If the animal in Washington was standing -- as at least three eyewitnesses have said -- it raises the question of whether other, seemingly healthy but infected animals are being passed for human consumption.
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Steve Mitchell is UPI's Medical Correspondent. E-mail [email protected]
