Virus-Serum-Toxin Act

151-158) was United States federal legislation designed to protect farmers and livestock raisers by regulating the quality of vaccines and point-of-care diagnostics for animals.

[1] Initially, the Virus-Serum-Toxin Act was created due to significant losses from unregulated manufacture and distribution of anti-hog cholera serum.

The act and its applicable guidelines are managed by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

During this time, a USDA official stated that the bill was crucial "to protect the farmer and stock raiser from improperly made and prepared serums, toxins, and viruses."

After the terrorist attacks that took place in America on September 11, 2001, Congress wanted to merge all of the major border inspection activities under the control of one department to make things easier and more efficient.

[2] It makes it unlawful for any person, firm or corporation to engage in the "preparation, sale, barter, exchange, or shipment" of "worthless, contaminated, dangerous or harmful" virus, serum, toxin, or analogous animal biologicals in interstate commerce.

[3] The first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, in the U.S. was reported in December 2003 at a farm in the state of Washington.

However, after Japan and fifty-two other countries banned U.S. beef, the USDA started a program to test half of the nation's 450,000 cows that could not walk.

Many people believe that Congress should pass legislation forcing the USDA to license BSE testing to ranchers and slaughterhouses, and it is possible to amend the VSTA to do so.