WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--Federal officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture needs to pay closer attention to state surveillance reports on bovine tuberculosis in order to achieve success in wiping out the a contagious cattle disease, according to an audit performed by USDA's Office of the Inspector General.
OIG auditors said USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or Aphis, "was not using its oversight tools timely or effectively" during a review conducted in 2004. State agriculture officials, OIG said, routinely document surveillance efforts for the disease, but "monthly reports were not being reviewed by the national or regional offices."
Aphis Administrator Ron DeHaven, in an official response to the audit, pledged to set up new procedures to review state surveillance reports by the end of 2006.
USDA's federal inspectors also often miss finding infections by concentrating on spotting the disease at slaughterhouses but not tracking the disease back to herds the cattle came from.
"We determined that Aphis' status system did not provide an accurate representation of (bovine) TB in the United States because it did not capture most TB cases," the OIG said in the report it made public Wednesday.
The disease is transmissible to humans, but that is "unlikely," according to the report, because "adequate cooking of meat and pasteurizing milk kills the TB bacteria."
Source: Bill Tomson; Dow Jones Newswires; 202-646-0088; bill.tomson@dowjones.com