News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released a report examining the results several developed nations and the European Union achieved when they consolidated oversight of food safety in a single agency, a step often advocated in the United State for solving some of the problems linked to contaminated imported and domestic food.

(CIDRAP News) – A third case of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) has been reported in a US resident, but health officials believe he contracted the disease in Saudi Arabia when he was a child.

(CIDRAP News) – The US government's expanded testing program for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) will be cut back soon, having shown that the nation has "no significant BSE problem," Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said today.

(CIDRAP News) – Japan has conditionally agreed to resume importing US beef, long banned from the country because of concern about bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

Under an agreement completed today, Japan will send inspectors to the United States this weekend to check beef processing plants and, if they find no problems, will then allow shipments to resume, according to an Agence-France Presse (AFP) report published today.

(CIDRAP News) – After close to 2 years of expanded testing, the US government is estimating that there are between four and seven cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) among the nation's 42 million adult cattle.

"The data shows that the prevalence of BSE in the United States is extraordinarily low," US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Mike Johanns said at a teleconference this morning.

(CIDRAP News) – Japan has again banned American beef following the discovery last week of cattle spine material in an imported shipment, a violation of the recent bilateral agreement designed to keep beef tainted with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) out of Japan.

(CIDRAP News) – Japan has lifted its ban on the importation of American beef, nearly 2 years after the discovery of the first US case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) triggered the boycott.