<B>US officials</B>, grappling to control the madcow crisis, expanded the recall of more than 10,000 pounds of beef to eight mostly western states and Guam.

While federal investigators cautioned the hunt for beef linked to a Washington state cow diagnosed with the deadly mad cow disease was at an early stage, a high-ranking US official called on foreign countries to end their ban on US beef.

A recall of the beef, which had been underway in Washington state, Oregon, California and Nevada, was expanded to Alaska, Montana, Hawaii, Idaho and Guam, the US official said. The 10,000 pounds of beef represents meat from 20 animals, including the sick cow, that were slaughtered at a Washington state facility on December 9.

That meat has since been distributed to stores and some of it possibly has been consumed. The US official reported no further progress yesterday toward identifying the birth herd of the Washington state cow, following information on Saturday that the animal may have come from Canada.

Public perception

Most major importers, including Japan, Mexico and South Korea, have sealed their borders to American beef and cattle. A US team is in Japan to try to persuade Tokyo that US beef is safe to eat and that adequate safeguards are in place to control the spread of the animal brain-wasting disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

?We think that the restrictions that are being imposed should be lifted,? said Ron DeHaven, the US Department of Agriculture?s chief veterinarian.

?Unfortunately, with this situation, what we?ve seen internationally is again an overreaction, with trade restrictions imposed more out of public perception than based on the science of what we know about this particular disease,? DeHaven told reporters.

A change in consumer sentiment, on top of the trade bans, would further damage the $175 billion industry made up of more than 1 million businesses, farms and ranches. Still unclear is whether American consumers will stop eating beef out of fears they could contract a human variant of mad cow disease. An outbreak of BSE in Europe more than a decade ago resulted in 137 human deaths, mostly in Britain. British farmers destroyed some 3.7 million cattle because of the outbreak.

McDonald?s Corp., the largest US hamburger chain, said the crisis has had no impact on sales of its beef products. It did not provide specific sales figures, however. Attempting to demonstrate that it is being overly cautious, the US department said it expanded the beef recall despite the fact that the meat presented ?virtually zero? risk. DeHaven said the beef included none of the brain, spinal cord or other risky tissues that carry mad cow disease.

Scientists believe the cow may have contracted mad cow disease from contaminated feed when it was young. DeHaven said a small silver ear tag linked to the cow ?suggests that tag would have been applied in Canada.? But Canadian and American officials said they won?t know for sure until DNA tests are run using tissue samples from the sickened cow.

DeHaven said Canada has obtained a semen sample from ?what is believed to be the sire of this infected cow.? By comparing DNA samples from both sides of the border : ?We should be able to make a firm determination? on where the Holstein cow was born, he said.

<B>Recommandations

Mad Cow case renews feed testing debate</B>

The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates animal feed, says enforcement has improved so significantly that 99.9 per cent of the nation?s feed companies comply with the ban. But the agency acknowledges that statistic is based on inspection of company records ? not on independent testing of the potentially infectious feed itself. Such tests are still being developed. So some lawmakers want more proof that the warnings issued in 2002 have been taken seriously. The government?s prevention efforts are getting new scrutiny because the nation?s first case of mad cow disease was confirmed last week ? in a single Holstein in Washington state. The disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is caused by a misshapen protein which attacks the cow?s brain, turning it into a sponge. It is linked to a human illness, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, that people can get from eating meat that contains an infected cow?s brain or spinal tissue. Since 1997, the United States has banned feeding cattle, sheep and goats any feed that contains brain and spinal cord material. That ban is important because consumption of contaminated feed is the only known way the disease spreads. In the current case, investigators are trying to trace the infected cow?s feed. In January 2002, the General Accounting Office found many firms that should have been complying with the feed ban had not been identified or inspected, and that the FDA had no overall strategy for enforcing the ban. Auditors also said the agency?s inspection database was too flawed to assess compliance. The FDA was already fixing problems when the GAO report emerged and has since increased inspections and improved its data collection, Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA?s Center for Veterinary Medicine, said in an interview last week.

Only two of more than 1,800 feed-handling plants are out of compliance with the ban now, Sundlof said. A compliance rate that was 75 per cent when the ban took effect is now nearly perfect, he said. Every feed facility is inspected at least once a year ? a review that allows the FDA to monitor the feed ban perhaps better than any other FDA program, Sundlof said. Still, the agency is pursuing improvements. ?We inspect based on records,? Sundlof said. ?We don?t have good tests to take the feed itself and determine whether it?s in compliance. So the records could be perfect, but you could potentially have prohibited material in the feed. We?re getting testing methods developed so that, in addition to just inspecting records, we take samples.? Some question the degree of improvement and whether the government has sufficiently explored the range of safeguards needed to prevent the disease. Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who requested the GAO report, isn?t satisfied with the response by the FDA or the Agriculture Department, which monitors safety of meat and animal health. Durbin plans to introduce a bill in January to further restrict the use of diseased meat or high-risk tissues in animal feed. ?We?ve asked a couple of times what these agencies were doing with regard to the (GAO) recommendations,? said Joe Shoemaker, a spokesman for Durbin. Shoemaker said the expected response should be ?either, ?We don?t find these recommendations to be on point,? or ?We?re going to be implementing them.? They don?t seem to have done either.?

Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, senior Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, has asked the GAO to evaluate the FDA?s progress in enforcing the ban. He also asked the GAO to review what precautions are taken on farms to ensure feed is handled properly. ?The evidence we have is that the industry has indeed significantly improved its compliance. But, obviously, the GAO report is very concerning because its conclusions were so much bleaker,? said Allison Dobson, a spokeswoman for Harkin.

Richard Cowan