June 24, 2004 Scripps Howard News Service by LANCE GAY

Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, along with Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Mark Dayton, D-Minn., asked Phyllis Fong, the USDA inspector general, to investigate what they called "breaches of public trust" created by changing procedures in a way that could have resulted in contaminated meat entering the United States.

An Agriculture Department spokeswoman said the imported meat met new and more stringent regulations Canada imposed after the discovery of the case. The second case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, in North America was diagnosed in a Washington state cow last December.

In response to a court suit brought by the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, the USDA last month admitted that Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman relaxed a prohibition against Canadian imports in August to permit some processed beef products to be sent to American plants.

The amounts involved are in dispute. The cattlemen's group cites customs records showing 33 million pounds of beef was imported, while the USDA says its records show 2.2 million pounds are involved.

The Democrats said a staff investigation of the records and briefings by USDA officials show that by October 2003, USDA rules "no longer required the removal of the brains and spinal cords of animals slaughtered in Canada" for import into the United States, and that slaughterhouses used to process the animals were not used strictly for slaughter of animals eligible for export to the United States.

Brains and spinal cords are not classified as "meat" under U.S. regulations and are suspected of carrying the proteins that cause mad cow disease to spread to other animals.

"These dramatic policy changes created a risk of cross-contamination in these facilities and increased the possibility that BSE could be introduced into the United States with these imports," the senators told Fong.

USDA spokeswoman Julie Quick said the Canadian government in July 2003 imposed regulations of its own requiring Canadian slaughterhouses to strip the spinal cords and brains from all animals slaughtered in that country.

"Any product we imported complied with those Canadian regulations," she said.

She said the USDA also conducted routine inspections of the Canadian slaughter plants. The relaxed regulations permitted the importation of processed meats only from cattle younger than 30 months of age. Mad cow disease typically develops only in older cattle.

Daschle said in a statement that the USDA disclosed to his office last week that 12 special permits were issued under the relaxed procedures allowing the importation of processed Canadian meat to10 meatpacking companies.