Anne Veneman: Banked on mad cows(BSE)spread to be halted in a few years.

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/front_page/108358536383690.xml

But the agency-sponsored study did not assess efforts to keep the disease out of the United States as Veneman said, The Oregonian has found. Researchers with the Harvard center, part of the university's School of Public Health, had spent two years trying to measure the risk that mad cow might enter the United States before concluding they could not.

"It was a hard thing to do; it was a hard thing to think about, how it might get in," George Gray, lead author and executive director of the Harvard risk center, said in an interview. "So we just said, 'Let's assume it gets in.' "

In making her assertions, Veneman turned attention away from prevention of a potential health threat, critics say, while banking on odds that if mad cow disease were to infect U.S. herds, its spread could be halted in a few years.

Despite the discovery of an infected Holstein in Washington state last December, Veneman's statement still guides U.S. policy. The Harvard study was Exhibit A for an agency plan to restart cattle imports from Canada after mad cow was discovered there last May.

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Bon Apatite.