News Release

PARA to attend U.S. Animal Health Association meeting, resubmit previously rejected resolutions

at USAHA annual meeting, Birmingham, Alabama, October 19-26 2000

PARA to champion food safety issue

As has been the case for the past three years, a delegation from PARA will attend this year's annual meeting of the United States Animal Health Association. PARA has asked to address the Johne's Disease Committee again this year, to present the latest scientific information pertaining to the relationship between Johne's Disease, a fatal infection of cattle, and Crohn's disease in humans. As in 1998 and 1999, PARA will again introduce two resolutions for consideration by the Johne's Disease Committee.

USAHA rescinded milk and beef testing resolutions
--politics trumped human health

In 1998, PARA submitted two resolutions to the Johne's Disease Committee: A resolution recommending the testing of retail milk and milk products for the presence of live Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP), the known cause of Johne's Disease and suspected cause of Crohn's disease, and a resolution recommending research to determine what cooking temperature is needed to reliably kill MAP in ground beef. Swayed by arguments from those who claimed that testing could cause unfavorable publicity for the milk industry, the Committee overwhemingly voted down the milk testing resolution. The beef testing resolution passed -- by a very thin margin -- but was never adopted by USAHA as a whole.

PARA re-submitted these resolutions again in 1999. This time the result was dramatically different: The Johne's Disease Committee passed both resolutions unanimously.

But resolutions must survive the vote of the entire USAHA membership present at the final meeting to become ratified. On October 19, these two resolutions were rejected. The only reason cited for this action: "During the discussions of these resolutions, there was much concern about the feasibility of end-product testing of milk and meat for an organism that science has not confirmed as being the cause of Crohn's in humans, and the usage of this information."

Despite repeated requests, PARA never received a complete explanation as to how, after passing unanimously at the Johne's Committe Meeting, these Resolutions were never ratified, but rather, were the only Resolutions "thrown out" in the final meeting at USAHA 1999.

References

Report on the 1998 USAHA meeting

Cheryl Miller's speech before the National Johne's Working Group at the 1998 USAHA meeting

Alan Kennedy's presentation to the Food Safety Committee at the 1998 USAHA meeting

Report on the 1999 USAHA meeting

Karen Meyer's speech before the Johne's Disease Committee at the 1999 USAHA meeting

PARA's USAHA page

Media articles about Johne's Disease.

PARA's National Johne's Working group (NJWG) page

For further information contact

Paratuberculosis Awareness and Research Association, Inc.

1. To raise awareness of the zoonotic (disease-causing) potential of the bacterium, MAP, in the national community of sufferers of Crohn's disease, in medical, veterinary and food science research communities, in governmental agencies and in the public in general
2. To urge governmental agencies to directly address control and eventual eradication of MAP from the human environment, particularly from foods of animal origin
3. To urge governmental and medical research agencies to make funding available for research which will determine the role played by MAP in causing Crohn's disease