Des Moines Register
03/24/06
Company sues U.S. for right to test for mad cow
A Kansas meatpacker says testing its own cattle would increase sales, but a
disease expert argues results may be misleading.
PHILIP BRASHER
REGISTER WASHINGTON BUREAU
Washington, D.C. — A Kansas meatpacker is suing government officials for the
right to test its own cattle for mad cow disease.
John Stewart, chief executive of Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, said the
testing would help boost sales.
"We're not talking about scientific justification," he said. "It's about satisfying the
needs of our customers."
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court, seeks to force the U.S.
Agriculture Department to allow Arkansas City, Kan.-based Creekstone to buy
the test kits.
The Agriculture Department argues that testing for mad cow disease is a
government function and that there is no reason to test every animal.
Testing cattle younger than 30 months of age, as Creekstone is proposing, would
be misleading because the disease can't be detected in cattle that young, said
Nolan Hartwig, an expert on the disease for Iowa State University.
"You're testing for something that the test by its very nature couldn't pick up," he
said.
Allowing a private company to test cattle would unfairly suggest that its beef was
safer than the products of a competitor that didn't do the testing, he said.
The lawsuit says Creekstone Farms has lost $100million in export sales since the
nation's first case of mad cow disease was reported in 2003.
The company believes it could sell beef to Japan and expand its domestic
markets if allowed to do the testing.
Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is linked to a rare but
fatal brain illness in humans.
The Agriculture Department has tested about 660,000 cattle since June 2004,
mostly older animals considered at highest risk for the disease. Two cases have
been found.
Stewart said it would cost about $20 per animal to do the testing, adding about
10 cents a pound to the retail price.