News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) ended 6 days of suspense for the beef industry by announcing late yesterday that a cow suspected of having bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) didn't have the disease after all.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) said today it is running confirmatory tests on a possible new case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease.

(CIDRAP News) – US and Japanese negotiators have reached general agreement on steps for resuming their beef trade after a 10-month interruption caused by the discovery of a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in Washington state last December.

(CIDRAP News) – The Government Accountability Office (GAO) asserted this week that weaknesses in the government's systems for handling food recalls increase the risk that consumers will buy and eat unsafe food.

(CIDRAP News) –The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a new guideline to prevent the use of cattle infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in any animal feed.

(CIDRAP News) – United Kingdom health officials this week began telling several thousand Britons they may face a slightly increased risk of contracting variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) because they received blood products from donors who later were found to have the disease.

(CIDRAP News) – New findings suggest that far more people may be susceptible to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) than was previously supposed, according to a report in the Aug 7 Lancet.

(CIDRAP News) – Twenty-nine states and tribal projects will receive $11.64 million in federal grants to develop livestock identification and tracking systems, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman has announced.