Phyllis Fong is my hero

Seven months after the USDA buried critical test results under a bushel of obfuscation and suspicious mismanagement, Phyllis Fong called a foul and tossed a flag in the eye of a blitzing beef industry linebacker. The elaborate defense of the U.S. beef business, protected by a “gold standard” B.S.E. test that has proven to be considerably less, fell apart.

Referring to a mysterious second test that was lost in a bureaucratic mess, the Sunday New York Times reported, “Phyllis K. Fong, the Agriculture Department's inspector general, arranged for further tests on specimens of the same cow. A test known as the Western blot, which is widely used in England and Japan but not in the United States, came up positive.”

“The sequence of events started in November, when an Agriculture Department laboratory in Ames, Iowa, performed two tests on the animal in question. After the "gold standard" test came up negative, the agency announced that the animal had not had mad cow disease. But at the same time, the same lab also conducted the experimental test, with different results.”

Ed Loyd, attempting to clarify the situation on behalf of the USDA, explained it this way: "The laboratory folks just never mentioned it to anyone higher up. They didn't know if it was valid or not, so they didn't report it."

It sounds like a lame attempt at a last ditch cover up to me. But let’s be generous for a moment. Suppose Ed is right. How many people knew about the second test and when did they know it? The lot of them should be lined up and bused to the nearest unemployment office.

Reacting to the Fong ordered retest, the NCBA’s Jim McAdams led a group of industry association officials with a complaint that unexpected testing creates "great anxiety within our industry," and leads to "significant losses."

The anxiety and losses – we’ll call it the Fong effect - weren’t caused by the unexpected test last week but by the unexpected and unreported test last November. If the results had been revealed, an embarrassed Taiwanese government wouldn’t be reinstating an import ban that had been lifted just a few weeks ago and touted with a heavy P.R. blitz orchestrated by the USMEF. Reports that the USDA’s J.B. Penn, exasperated over the slow progress of diplomatic negotiations, threatened a Japanese delegation over the beef issue wouldn’t be making the news, either.

Here is the bottom line: We can no longer use science to defend our practices. The problem we must face now is repairing worldwide confidence in our beef supply. We should open the field to free market forces. Testing of any kind by any part of the beef industry supply chain should be allowed immediately. The choice should be a business decision: Care about international trade? Test every animal if you so desire. Interested only in U.S. consumption? Follow the current governmental edict as prescribed by “sound science.”

Hand-in-hand with those steps, of course, is the rapid implementation of NAIS. Without reliable and quick traceability, there can be no repair to our international standing. We will cede the marketplace to Australia, Argentina and Canada.

Ed Loyd adamantly maintains "There is no scientific basis for doing what Japan and many critics want: testing all animals or all those more than 20 months old.” The basis for testing all animals is one of satisfying the requirements of our international trading partners. The hard facts of science and the soft facts of public opinion often differ. Hanging onto the former in the face of pressure created by the latter is a formula for corporate suicide.

Using our “gold standard” test as the final step is now and forever a dead issue. Even before the current debacle, Dr. Linda Detwiler, who led the USDA mad cow testing program until 2002, said the department should be using the Western blot test.

"You need to put as many tools in your tool kit as possible," she said.

Detwiler also attacks other financially sensible but foolhardy practices such as recycling poultry litter with spilled cattle meal back to cattle, giving calves "milk replacer" made from cattle blood and letting cows eat dried restaurant "plate waste." She also calls for brains and spines of all cattle to be destroyed, not made into feed even for pigs or chickens.

"That's how you keep infectivity out of the food chain," she said. "If a farmer makes a mistake and gives pig feed to cattle by mistake, the feed is safe."

That’s also how you repair a badly damaged international image and prevent it from spilling over into the U.S. marketplace. Forget science for now. If it doesn’t pass the “yuck” test, don’t do it. Science sometimes loses; public opinion always wins.