Animal Science Department

The educational program delivered by the Beef Cattle Extension Unit of Cornell University will use research based knowledge to improve the sustainability of the State's beef industry utilizing the natural, physical, labor and demographic resources of New York State. The goal is a beef industry which is economically and environmentally sustainable while being competitive in the local, national and global area.

U.S. beef not the cause vCJD case in Virginia

U.S. Department of Agriculture undersecretary Dr. Richard Raymond said late yesterday in a press conference that preliminary results of an autopsy on a young woman who died recently in Portsmouth, Va.,
"indicate the patient did not die of vCJD."

Reports of the woman's death in the media and from the Virginia
health department had raised the question that her death may have been caused by variant Creuztfeldt Jakob Disease. That possibility triggered an autopsy and an investigation because the patient had not traveled outside the U.S.

Raymond reported the preliminary results of the investigation during a Washington press conference held to reassure the Korean press corps about the safety of U.S. beef supply. The announcement came in the context of a broader explanation of U.S. safeguards against BSE.

"We have never had a person in the Unites States from eating American beef," Raymond told reporters.