The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Thursday it was scaling down its nationwide surveillance program for mad cow disease due to its "extremely low prevalence" in the United States.

"It's time that our surveillance efforts reflect what we now know is a very, very low level of BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) in the United States," Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said in a statement. The ongoing surveillance program will sample approximately 40,000 animals each year, compared with the 759,000 tested since June 2004 after a mad cow case was detected in Washington state in December 2003.

"This ongoing surveillance program will maintain our ability to detect BSE, provide assurance that our interlocking safeguards are successfully preventing BSE, while continuing to exceed science- based international guidelines," Johanns said.

Under the program, USDA will continue to collect samples from a variety of sites and from cattle populations where the disease is most likely to be detected. According to USDA, the new program will not only comply with the science-based international guidelines set forth by the World Animal Health organization (OIE), it will provide testing at a level ten times higher than the OIE recommended level.

In April, USDA released an analysis of 7 years of BSE surveillance data. This included data from an enhanced surveillance program, which began in June 2004, as a one-time effort to determine the prevalence of BSE in the United States.

The analysis concluded that the prevalence of BSE in the United States is less than 1 case per million adult cattle. The analysis was submitted to a peer review process and a panel of outside experts affirmed the conclusions.

Source: Xinhua