Gov’t tightens rules on entry of beef from US

The Department of Agriclture (DA) is enforcing strict measures to prevent the entry of beef from the US that could be contaminated with the dreaded mad cow disease.

Under memorandum order 33 issued by Agriculture Secretary Luis Lorenzo Jr., only deboned and deglanded beef from cattle not older than 30 months and, devoid of any nerves and other BSE specified risk materials (SRM) can be imported.

Such risk materials include skull, brain, eyes, tonsils, spinal cord, and dorsal root ganglia (clusters of nerve cells connected to the spinal cord and closely apposed to the vertebral column) of cattle aged 30 months or older, and the distal ileum (part of the small intestine) of cattle of all ages.

SRM refers to tissues that, in BSE-infected cattle, have been shown to contain the infective agent and transmit the disease. The skull has been designated because of the high probability of it becoming contaminated at the time of stunning and during manipulation of the other tissues if their separate removal was permitted. The SRM must be removed at slaughter or, in the case of the dorsal root ganglia, during the cutting/boning process, and disposed of along with other inedible material from the establishment.

The memo order was issued after US agriculture and health authorities announced the presence of mad cow disease in Washington state that infected a Gov’t tightens Holstein cattle reportedly imported from Canada. Mad cow disease is the layperson’s name for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), a transmissible, slowly progressive, degenerative, fatal disease affecting the central nervous system of adult cattle.

While BSE is a cattle disease, the human disease called variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (vCJD) has been associated with the consumption of products derived from BSE-infected cattle. Cattle tissues identified as SRM are not generally consumed as food. However, during processing, SRM could be unintentionally included in meat products destined for human consumption.

Canada, whose cattle industry last year also suffered after BSE was determined, introduced the SRM policy to prevent tissues that may contain BSE infectivity from entering the human food chain.

Memo 33 also specified that beef imported from the US could come only from healthy ambulatory and not downer cattle.

A downer cattle is always suspected of being a BSE case because it affects the brain and the main symptoms are nervous tremors and progressively deteriorating motor coordination. As a result, the affected cattle cannot stand and walk and subsequently classified as "downers" and ultimately slaughtered.

At the same time, the age of the slaughter cattle will need to be certified by the US Department of Agriculture or a third party certification company to be accredited by the Philippine Department of Agriculture as no more than 30 months.

"The certification is required to ensure that imported beef is coming from cattle not more than 30 months old and thus, free from the prions that cause the mad cow disease," explained Lorenzo.

Also, the production or slaughter date of the beef will be included in the packaging label.

The Philippines imported a total of 38.7 million kilos of beef last year from various countries, namely Brazil, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.