Creekstone seeks to ship brain stem samples to Japan for BSE testing

Meatingplace.com
April 14, 2004
by Daniel Yovich


As Creekstone Farms mulls its legal options in the wake of the Agriculture Department's refusal to allow the company to test all of its cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, the Arkansas City, Kan.-based processor is now seeking approval to ship brain stem tissue from product harvested at Creekstone to Japan for BSE testing.

In a three page letter dated Tuesday and addressed to Undersecretaries J.B. Penn and Bill Hawks, as well as Dale Moore, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman's chief of staff, Creekstone CEO John Stewart and COO Bill Fielding said the company will challenge USDA's refusal to allow the company to test for BSE all the cattle it slaughters. Stewart and Fileding said they are "analyzing our legal options" and that the company is now losing about $200,000 per day because of the Japanese embargo on U.S. beef.

Stewart and Fielding asked USDA reconsider its decision, and, if USDA refuses to allow the company to test all of its cattle, "approve the procedure whereby Creekstone Farms is allowed to ship brain stem samples to Japan for BSE testing" in that government's laboratories.

"Please understand our situation as well as our consternation over why the USDA will not embrace our plan," Stewart and Fielding said in reference to USDA's April 8 announcement it would not approve Creekstone's original request. "Creekstone Farms plans to test more cattle than the USDA, at a lower cost. If our plan were to be implemented, we would test over 300,000 head of cattle over the course of a year, versus the USDA proposed cattle population of approximately 220,000 head."

USDA does not yet have a detailed public response to the Creekstone letter. "At this point we have received the letter and we are in the process of reviewing it," said spokesman Ed Loyd.

Creekstone asks USDA to consider other options

As other alternatives, Creekstone asked USDA to:

• "Expand the USDA's surveillance program to involve 1 million head of young animals
  
• Approve Kansas State University as an official USDA laboratory with direction to establish Creekstone Farms as a satellite laboratory.
  
• Approve the purchase of young Canadian cattle that would be BSE tested at our processing plant in Arkansas City, Kansas.
  
• Approve labeling domestic product BSE tested due to increased consumer concern in the United States."
  

Additionally, Stewart and Fielding asked USDA to provide in writing the legal basis for the agency's denial of a private industry from performing a rapid test method for BSE. The two executives noted they "will continue to track this loss on a daily basis to determine damages" should they attempt to seek a legal remedy to the impasse.

Turning up the heat

The issue has become an industry and political hot potato, and it appears that Creekstone may be gearing up for a media campaign targeting the agency. The letter addressed to Penn, Hawks and Moore advised the officials that Creekstone intends to share the letter with the media on Wednesday. It also reminded the agency that Japanese Vice Agriculture Minister Mamoru Ishihara said the "U.S. government's decision not to accept [Creekstone's] offer is, frankly speaking, regrettable."

The USDA rejection "has blown hopes for an early resumption of beef imports, unless Japan drops its demand for all-cattle checks," said another senior Japanese agriculture ministry official.

Closer to home, Creekstone has won some support among a group of U.S. lawmakers and at least one former USDA official.

Last week, Duane Acker, the agency's former assistant secretary for science and education, wrote to Veneman urging that USDA swiftly approve Creekstone's request to test all of the cattle it slaughters, noting that Creekstone was seeking the approval as a customer requirement.

"Rule number one for selling a product, whether the seller be a company, an industry, or an exporting country, is to provide what the buyer wants," Acker said. "It is clear Japan and some other countries want beef product from tested animals."

Japan, the United States largest beef export market, is the only country that tests all of its cattle for BSE, and is alone among the more 50 countries that closed their borders to U.S. beef after the Dec. 23 discovery of a single case of BSE to demand that the United States test all beef for export to that country as a precondition to resume trade.

Creekstone's desire to test all of its cattle also won the support of Kansas Agriculture Secretary Adrian Polansky. The Associated Press reported Tuesday afternoon that Polansky believes Creekstone's ability to test its product is "a basic tenet of a free-market system."