"The meat from the animal is then processed into the food
chain BEFORE the results of the tests are known !!!!!"
Scientists and food safety activists said the rules had been fatally watered down, under pressure from the farming and meat-packing lobbies.
Dr Stanley Pruisner, a neurologist who won the Nobel Prize for identifying the causes of BSE, told the New York Times that, just six weeks ago, he requested a private meeting with the US agriculture secretary, Ann Veneman, to urge widespread testing of cattle.
"I went to tell her what happened in Canada was going to happen in the United States. I told her it was just a matter of time," he said.
Mrs Veneman - a former agriculture industry lobbyist - did not share his sense of urgency, said Dr Pruesner, who accused officials of being "wilfully blind".
The US department of agriculture (Usda) is conducting a "voluntary" recall of 10,410lb of beef feared tainted by the suspect cow. The animal, a Holstein sent for slaughter after being partly paralysed while calving, was killed at a small, old-fashioned plant in Moses Lake, Washington. Usda officials described it as a "downer" animal, or one unable to stand. A tissue sample of the cow was flown to Britain on Tuesday night for scientists to confirm the analysis of tests in America.
The US beef industry has resisted strong scientific pressure to stop processing meat from "downer" cows, and has also refused to stop using neck bones and spinal columns, where BSE proteins concentrate, from "automatic meat recovery systems" - giant rendering systems designed to extract scraps of tissue for use in hot dogs, burgers and pizza toppings.
Rules imposed after 1997 ban the feeding of cattle products to cows, and order the separation of brain and spinal tissue from carcasses at the point of slaughter.
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