You think by now they'd have the system down.

An inconclusive test indicates that a third cow may have been infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Once again, USDA faces complications in determining whether the cow had BSE.

First, though the sample was collected in April, it was only sent for testing in July. Evidently, the vet who took the sample forgot to submit it for testing. According to the L.A. Times, USDA's chief veterinarian John Clifford called the age of the sample "not optimal."

Moreover, the sample was preserved in such a way that USDA scientists cannot use the more advanced Western blot test (also known as the protein immunoblot test), to re-test the sample, but rather scientists must rely on the IHC test that gave the first inconclusive results. The IHC test also failed to catch the last case of BSE, but the case was eventually confirmed using the Western blot. Because the Western blot cannot be used in this case, the results may remain inconclusive. Fortunately, USDA recently adopted the Western blot as its new gold standard of BSE surveillance.

Posted by Genevieve Smith, 04:47:50 PM



Running on Empty: The Politics of Fuel Economy

According to the New York Times, EPA has withheld a report showing that due to loopholes in fuel efficiency standards, manufacturers have been allowed to produce cars that, on average, are significantly less fuel efficient than cars sold in the late 1980s. The loopholes give car manufacturers credits towards their fuel economy standards if they produce dual-fuel cars in their fleet—those that can run on both ethanol blend and gasoline. The credit then allows the manufacturers to add more inefficient cars such as SUVs and trucks to their fleet. Since so few gas stations have ethanol pumps, most consumers can't actually take advantage of the dual-fuel capabilities; manufacturers receive the fuel economy credit while most of the cars will never run on alternative fuel sources.

EPA plans to withhold the report on fuel economy until after the vote on the energy bill, which despite promises to greatly reduce the U.S's oil dependency, does little to improve fuel efficiency. The House passed the bill today, and the Senate is scheduled to do so as well. Read more:

Releasing the report this week would have been inopportune for the Bush administration, its critics said, because it would have come on the eve of a final vote in Congress on energy legislation six years in the making. The bill, as it stands, largely ignores auto mileage regulations.

The executive summary of the copy of the report obtained by The Times acknowledges that "fuel economy is directly related to energy security," because consumer cars and trucks account for about 40 percent of the nation's oil consumption. But trends highlighted in the report show that carmakers are not making progress in improving fuel economy, and environmentalists say the energy bill will do little to prod them.

Read the text of the embargoed report, provided by New York Times. For more on fuel economy, check out Public Citizen.

Posted by Genevieve Smith, 03:26:35 PM

Tuesday, July 26, 2005