Saturday, January 3, 2004

Local cattleman, state officials watch mad cow disease reaction

Jane Moorman News-Bulletin Staff Writer; jmoorman@news-bulletin.com

Belen Charlie Meyer, owner of Cattlemen's Livestock in Belen, along with cattlemen and dairymen in Valencia County, is keeping a watchful eye on the events unfolding in Washington state since the discovery of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, in a Holstein on Dec. 9

The cattle industry generates $10 million to $12 million in Valencia County's economy annually.

To be up-to-date with the market, Meyer checks the national prices of fat cattle and cows regularly during the day.

Entering the second week of the Washington investigation, Meyer says it is still a wait-and-see situation as to the impact on the industry's economy.

"The price is down to 80 cents per pound compared to a month to six weeks ago, when it was over $1 per pound on fat cattle. But it's more of a natural adjustment of prices then a reaction to the BSE incident in Washington," Meyer said of the prices for animals from feed lots. "That's about $10 to $12 per animal cheaper than 10 days ago."

"Right now, the packer bids are listed as not found because of the BSE incident and the fact that this is a short kill week," he said of the market prices being shown on his computer.

He is also keeping track of the futures market, where he said the price limits have been locked in for the first four months of 2004.

"Between this and the fact that the exchange has dropped the limit to check the sale off from $1.50 to $5, the futures buyers are not going to panic from the Washington incident and cause the market to drop," he said.

Another factor in the impact on the economy is that 11 countries, including Japan, South Korea, Russia and Mexico, suspended imports of U.S. beef and beef products. USDA officials are working to provide U.S. trading partners and international animal-health officials information regarding the steps being taken in response to the detection.

While the U.S. is the leading exporter of beef in the world, the exported beef is only 9 percent of the industry's total production.

"When countries banned imports from Canada, it had a bigger impact on their economy because 60 percent of their beef is exported," Meyer said. "It was the ban on Canadian beef that caused our prices to rise over $1 per pound."

Washington

investigation continues

As the U.S. Department of Agriculture investigates the herd history of the infected Washington dairy cow to determine if there is a potential outbreak of BSE in the United States, the cattle industry is viewing the incident as an animal health story rather than a consumer safety story.

The New Mexico Beef Council has joined other cattlemen's organizations and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman in reassuring consumers that it is safe to continue to eat beef with confidence.

"The USDA Food Safety Inspection Service has assured us that no BSE infectious material went into the food supply," said Dian Chacón-Reitzel, executive director of New Mexico Beef Council. "Currently, science indicates BSE is not found in muscle meats, like steak and roasts. Nor can it be transmitted in milk and milk products. Rather, it is only found in central nervous system tissue such as the brain and spinal cord."

Meyer explained the source of the beef also determines if it potentially could have contracted BSE.

"The disease has an incubation period of several years and has never been found in cattle younger than 30 months. Fat cattle from feed lots are butchered and eaten before they reach 30 months of age," he said.

Since there are no meat-packing operations in New Mexico, Meyer says most of the cattle he sells goes to either Texas or Kansas for butchering. He added that 95 percent of his business is beef cattle.

Meyer did not know who eats New Mexico beef. "It is worked into the country's beef pipeline."

The USDA Food Safety Inspection Service ensures that beef butchered and distributed in the United States is free of disease.

Chacón-Reitzel commends the USDA systems that have been built over the past 15 years to prevent this disease from spreading and affecting either animal health or public health.

"The Washington dairy cow in question was quickly identified and the infectious agent contained," she said. "The farm of origin has been identified and quarantined. This proves that the system to detect and eliminate BSE is effective."

What is BSE?

BSE is a degenerative neurological disease caused by an aberrant protein called a prion. It is in a family of diseases — all caused by prions — referred to as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, or TSEs. TSEs include scrapie in sheep and goats, chronic wasting disease in deer and elk and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.

Since an outbreak of BSE in the United Kingdom starting in 1986, it has been determined that cattle can become infected with BSE by eating feed contaminated with the infectious BSE agent. In 1997, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration prohibited the use of most mammalian protein in the manufacture of animal feed intended for cows and other ruminants.

After the outbreak in the United Kingdom, the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Food Safety Inspection services have had an emergency response plan in place since 1990 to respond to a BSE detection in the United States. Based on new scientific information and understanding about the disease, this plan was revised in 1996 and again in 2001.

A 2001 Harvard University Center for Risk Assessment report concluded that "measures taken by the United States government and industry make the U.S. robust against the spread of BSE to animals or humans should it be introduced in this country."

"This report is proving true," Chacón-Reitzel said of the way the USDA had reacted to the Washington cow incident.

E-mail this story Printer-friendly version