Leahy: Mad Cow Case Spotlights
Need
To Remove Sick Animals From Human Food Chain
…Calls On Bush Administration To End Its Opposition To Downed Animal
Bill
(Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2003)
-- Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) says he and others will renew efforts
to pass their bill to remove “downer” animals from the human food
chain when Congress reconvenes in January.
The Washington State
animal with confirmed bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or
“mad cow disease,” was a downed animal that would not have entered
the human food chain if the Downed Animal Act were law.
Downed livestock, or “downer” animals,
are sick or injured and are unable to stand or walk unassisted.
Often they are dragged with chains and trucked several states away
for slaughter. A large majority of non-ambulatory animals
slaughtered for human consumption are also contaminated with fecal
matter, the main cause of salmonella poisoning.
The Senate has twice passed the Downed
Animal Act in the last two years, but the White House each time
worked to kill it in House-Senate conferences. Leahy led in
including the measure in last year’s farm bill. This year, the
Senate approved it as part of its version of the annual budget bill
for the Department of Agriculture, the Fiscal Year 2004 Agriculture
Appropriations Act. The Downed Animal Act was removed from the
final versions of those bills at the White House’s insistence. The
current agriculture appropriations bill – now without the Downed
Animal Act -- has passed the House as part of the omnibus
appropriations bill and is pending final Senate action when the
Congress reconvenes in late January. Leahy said he and others
intend to bring the Downed Animal Act to a vote, either by restoring
it to the appropriations bill if Republican leaders allow
negotiations on the omnibus package, as stand-alone legislation, or
as an amendment to another legislative vehicle.
The bill is sponsored by Sen. Daniel
K. Akaka (D-Hawaii), Leahy, and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).
The Akaka-Leahy-Boxer bill would set a
uniform nationwide standard to euthanize downed animals and remove
them from the processing line for products consumed by humans,
removing economic incentives to put these animals into the human
food chain.
Leahy says the bill is good for
consumers and for the U.S. livestock industry, and it
would mean more humane treatment of downed animals. “For the sake
of consumers and for the sake of the confidence we need the public
and the world to have in U.S. agriculture, taking sick animals out
of the human food chain is sensible and practical, and it is
something we can do immediately. If our bill was law today, the
infected animal in Washington State never would have been put into
the food chain in the first place.”
“This mad cow case has thrown a
spotlight on this problem and on the Bush Administration’s efforts
to block higher standards,” Leahy continued. “The Senate keeps
passing our bill, and the White House keeps taking it out in back
room deals with the special interests. It’s time for the White
House to end its obstruction of the downed animals bill. The
President needs to work with us to put this sensible consumer
protection into law.”
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