United States to destroy 450 calves in mad cow probe

11.45am - By RANDY FABI

WASHINGTON - The month-old offspring of a Washington state dairy cow infected with mad cow disease will be destroyed along with about 450 other calves as a safety precaution, the US Agriculture Department said on Monday.

Killing the herd of bull calves is a measure intended to reassure consumers that the US food supply is safe. The Bush administration is also trying to restore confidence among more than two dozen trading partners that halted some US$3.2 billion ($4.82 billion) in annual US beef shipments after the deadly disease was found last month.

"We have made a decision to depopulate those bull calves sometime this week," USDA Chief Veterinarian Ron DeHaven told reporters. "Approximately 450 animals will be sacrificed."

USDA said that while it was known that the calf of the infected cow was in the herd, officials could not identify which animal was that offspring and so all the calves in the herd were to be destroyed.

The planned slaughter leaves at least 4000 other cattle linked to the mad cow investigation still under quarantine.

The calves will be killed at an idle slaughter plant and samples of each will be saved in case scientists need to analyse them. No tests to detect the brain-wasting disease are planned at this time, DeHaven said.

"To test all of those brains would not be fruitful," he said. Scientists believe mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), needs at least three years to incubate and DeHaven said the herd was not old enough to show infection.

USDA officials noted there was only a remote chance that the infected cow transmitted the disease to its offspring.

On the trade front, a US delegation left for Mexico on Monday to update officials there on the first US mad cow case. Last week, a similar team visited Japan and South Korea.

The three nations last year were the top buyers of US beef.

A senior Japanese official on Monday expressed doubts about the effectiveness of safety measures USDA announced last week, Kyodo news agency said. "They are not as effective as the ones being implemented in Japan," Vice Agriculture Minister Yoshiaki Watanabe was quoted as saying.

Last week, the USDA unveiled six measures, including a ban on the use of crippled "downer" cattle for human food.

Japan's trade minister will meet with the US Trade Representative on Thursday as part of a Japanese fact-finding mission. That trip may include a visit to Washington state where the infected cow lived before its Dec. 9 slaughter, an official with the Japanese government told Reuters.

Asked how long the trade ban might last, the Japanese official responded: "I think this is a very long, long time."

News of the Japanese trip sent US cattle futures higher on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The April contract rose 1.5 cents to 73.450 cents per pound, helping reverse steep losses during the past two weeks in reaction to the mad cow case.

Japan suspended imports of US beef immediately after the Dec. 23 announcement of the first US case of mad cow disease. A rare human form of it, known as variant creutzfeldt-jakob disease (vCJD), can result from eating contaminated cattle products.

Officials are awaiting DNA test results from a USDA laboratory and a Canadian laboratory to confirm US suspicions the infected Holstein was born in Alberta, Canada in 1997. That is the province where Canada's first native case of mad cow disease was reported in May 2003.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency expected both sets of DNA results to be ready on Tuesday or Wednesday.

If DNA tests confirm the cow was born in Canada, the Bush administration could seek a BSE-free status from an international animal health agency.

It is still "way too premature" to say whether USDA would seek that standing, DeHaven said. Progress on identifying all the animals from the birth herd of the sick cow would play a role in such a request, he added.

Individual beef-importing countries will also do their own assessments of whether they thought the United States was free of mad cow disease, he said.

Rep Lee Terry, a Republican from the cattle-raising state of Nebraska, urged the USDA to buy US beef to help ranchers and boost consumer confidence. The USDA buys millions of pounds of American beef each year for the federal school lunch programme and other subsidised feeding programmes.

- REUTERS