Setback in Market for Risky Cow Parts

Meat safety regulations aimed at reducing the risk of mad cow disease will be particularly disheartening for those Latinos whose culinary favorites include tacos filled with brain and small intestines, soup with bits from the spinal cord and, at holiday times, the whole head of a cow.

The rules, imposed after the Dec. 23 disclosure of the first case in the U.S. of mad cow disease, prohibit the sale of skulls, brains, eyes, vertebrae and spinal cords from cattle more than 30 months old. Also banned is a portion of the small intestine known as the distal ileum.

Those cattle parts, believed to be the most likely to harbor infectious agents, are not widely consumed in the U.S. But the U.S. beef industry has found buyers for these so-called variety meats in countries such as Mexico, Japan and South Korea, as well as in immigrant communities at home.

“It’s a growing market,” said Bruce Berven, a spokesman for Selma, Calif.-based Harris Ranch Beef Co., the state’s leading beef processor and exporter. “California’s Hispanic community is a heavier consumer of beef products than the general population.”

U.S. officials have visited Japan and South Korea, and a delegation is heading to Mexico this week to try to persuade officials to reopen their borders to U.S. beef, now that the new safety regulations are in place. Thirty-six countries have imposed import bans since the disease, which is formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, surfaced in the U.S. At least 2,000 containers of U.S. beef and beef products are stranded in foreign ports or at sea.

Even if overseas markets are reopened, it isn’t clear whether foreign governments will maintain restrictions on cattle parts deemed a high risk.

“Those governments may say, ‘Eating brain and spinal cord is part of our tradition and we will continue to consume those products,’ ” said Lynn Heinze, a spokesman for the U.S. Meat Export Federation. “Or they may choose some additional restrictions down the road.”

Heinze said some foreign governments were considering allowing the sale of U.S. beef products already in the pipeline. But some of the stranded beef is heading back to the U.S. market, where it is likely to be sold at a loss.

Exports, particularly of variety meats and other exotic items, represent big bucks for the U.S. beef industry. Meatpackers struggling to survive in a highly competitive market have become entrepreneurial, selling every part of the cow to maximize profits. Foreign customers often pay a high price for items that would in this country end up as low-value pet food or fertilizer. In 2000, foreigners paid a premium of $1.2 billion for those otherwise underused parts, according to a study conducted for the U.S. Meat Export Federation.

Japan, which purchased $1.03 billion of U.S. beef and beef products last year, is a leading buyer of tongue, small intestines and mountain chain tripe for consumption in its Korean barbecue restaurants. Unibright Foods Inc., a Bell Gardens meat packaging operation, supplies a customized “nine-inch short plate” to Japan’s Yoshinoya fast food chain and last year shipped 50 tons of beef tongue to Japan.

The export business ground to a halt when Japan became the first country to ban U.S. beef. Daniel Ogita, president of Unibright, said it was too early to measure the effect on his company’s operations because much of Japan and South Korea was shut down last week for the New Year’s break. He said his company was still processing meat for Yoshinoya’s U.S. operations, which haven’t seen a drop in business.

“Luckily, U.S. consumers aren’t that sensitive to BSE,” he said. “They trust that U.S. beef is safe.”

In California, fears of mad cow disease, a fatal illness caused by malformed proteins known as prions, don’t seem to have scared off customers in the Latino community, retailers and beef packers say. Humans can contract a form of mad cow disease known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from eating infected animal products.

Jack Mendoza, meat manager for Crawford’s Markets Inc., with stores in Norwalk, El Monte and Santa Ana, said he had sold 20 whole cow heads over the holiday season and was still doing a steady business in the brains and intestines he had in stock before the ban took effect.

“It’s like turkey” for some Latinos, he said of cow’s head, which is roasted in a pit for a traditional Mexican dish known as barbacoa. “They make it during Thanksgiving, New Year’s and Christmas. It’s just a holiday thing.”

Mendoza said the mad cow scare might even boost beef sales if prices -- which reached record levels earlier this year -- go down.

Heightened concerns over food safety could be good news for E.B. Manning & Son Inc., a custom beef-packing house in Pico Rivera. Since 1995, Manning has offered a “natural beef” produced from cattle that haven’t been fed additives. To control quality, the company tracks its cattle from birth to slaughter. Under the new meat safety program, the United States has said it would make a source verification program mandatory.

“We can go back and tell anybody exactly where those calves came from, where they were raised and how they were fed,” said Andy Broberg, president of BroPack Inc., a broker that markets Manning natural beef products to upscale supermarkets such as Gelson’s. “This will be good for our business.”