U.S., Some Ranchers Clash Over Mad Cow Tests

John Tarpoff knows his demand is illogical.

There is no scientific reason for him to extract a sliver of brain from each steer he slaughters to test for mad cow disease.

He kills only young cattle at his processing plant: certified Angus, 12 to 20 months old. Animals that young just don’t get the disease -- at least, not at a detectable level. Testing every carcass is “highly unnecessary,” Tarpoff said.

Still, he’s desperate to do it.

But the federal government won’t let him.

Tarpoff’s best customer, a Japanese beef distributor, will import American cattle only if they’ve been tested for BSE. That’s the policy of the Japanese government, since a dairy cow infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, a brain-wasting disease, was discovered last year in Washington state.

“If our government just permitted us to test, we could have that business back instantly,” Tarpoff said.

Under a 1913 law, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has sole authority to license “veterinary biologics,” such as diagnostic tests. So far, the agency has licensed the mad cow test kits only to itself. They can be used only by USDA scientists or at seven USDA-approved labs.

And they can be used only to further the USDA’s surveillance system, which monitors the nation’s herd for BSE by testing less than 1% of cattle sent to slaughter.

“Let’s say you’re conducting your own testing, and you get a false positive. You yell out: ‘Guess what? We have a positive!’ Know what would happen? Everybody in the world would stop trading with the U.S.,” USDA spokesman Jim Rogers said.

“Or let’s say you get a cow that tests positive, but instead of telling us, you go bury it out in the pasture,” Rogers said. “That’s why we need to have one confirmatory agency in charge.”

To which Tarpoff responds: fine.

He’s happy to leave the government in charge. He’ll send his samples to a USDA lab. He’ll let the USDA monitor his packinghouse to make sure no steer is sold, or disposed of, unless it tests clean. He’ll pay the estimated $15 to $30 a test, so taxpayers don’t have to.

“We’ll fit in with whatever protocol they want,” he said.

But the USDA will not come up with a protocol -- not for using the mad cow test to guarantee the safety of specific meat products. “It’s not a food safety test. It’s a surveillance test,” chief veterinary officer W. Ron DeHaven said this spring.

A fatal disorder that causes cattle to stagger and fall, BSE is caused by malformed proteins, known as prions, which eat holes in the brain. Humans can contract a form of BSE by eating infected meat. More than 150 people worldwide, most of them in Great Britain, have died from the human form of the illness, known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob.

Britain now tests all cattle older than 24 months. France and Germany test more than half their cows. Japan, which had a minor outbreak of BSE three years ago, tests every animal it slaughters.

The USDA, however, has resisted calls by consumer advocates to test more of the 35 million cattle slaughtered each year. After the BSE case surfaced in Washington, the agency enacted other reforms instead, including banning from the food supply the organs, nerves and tissues most likely to harbor prions. “Downer” cattle, too sick to walk, are also no longer allowed to be processed for food.

And starting this summer, the USDA plans to step up surveillance. In the past, the agency tested about 20,000 animals a year. It will sample at least 200,000 cattle -- most of them injured, sick or older -- in the next 18 months.

But the system is not perfect. This month, the USDA acknowledged that a cow that staggered and fell at a slaughterhouse in Texas was not tested for BSE. Instead, it was rendered into animal feed, in violation of USDA policy. The government has said there is no risk to humans or to livestock, but consumer groups have called for a congressional investigation.

Insisting that American beef is the safest in the world, many ranchers say the USDA has already done enough. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Assn., which represents 250,000 ranchers, strongly opposes universal testing.

Its producers worry that if one packinghouse -- however small -- began marketing its beef as “BSE tested,” consumers would infer that it was safer. Then pressure would build on all producers to test every animal.

That could cost the industry $1 billion a year, according to Gregg Doud, the group’s chief economist.

Many ranchers also fear that letting a few small producers test their cattle will hurt beef exports overall.

Dozens of nations closed their markets to American beef after the USDA disclosed the mad cow case Dec. 23. Industry officials hope their most lucrative market, Japan, will relax its ban by fall. But they say Japan will have no incentive to import untested American beef if it can procure meat from smaller slaughterhouses that test every animal.

“I can understand their position. I truly can,” Tarpoff said. “But from a business standpoint, it hurts.”

The cooperative he manages, Gateway Beef, was founded a year and a half ago by 59 cattle ranchers in Missouri and Illinois. Most were producing premium beef, raised without hormones or antibiotics. But it was harder and harder to make a profit.

With four huge processors controlling 80% of the U.S. beef market, the independent farmers thought they had no leverage to negotiate decent prices. So they banded together to seek their own niche markets.

The cooperative sells to several posh restaurants and a kosher grocery in New York. But Tarpoff’s most promising deal was with Japan.

A distributor there offered a premium for “spare parts” considered of little value in the U.S., such as tongues, offal and cuts from the front half of the steer. A pound of boneless chuck short ribs, for instance, might fetch $1.25 domestically. Tarpoff could sell it to Japan for $6.25.

The co-op slaughters just 200 cattle a week. Even on such small volume, Tarpoff estimates that the Japanese deal would have brought in at least $50,000 a week. He was ready to ship his first refrigerated boxes when the BSE case in Washington surfaced.

As he walks through his slaughterhouse cooler, Tarpoff mourns the lost revenue.

Rows and rows of skinned steer, split down the middle, dangle from meat hooks. Dark gray beef tongues dry on a silver tray. In the cutting room, workers slice the fat from 70-pound hunks of marbled loin. All of this meat has been sold, some at a good price. But it would be worth many times more if Gateway could test it for BSE.

“All we’re trying to do is satisfy our customer. That’s what business is all about,” said Bill Boston, a co-op member.

“The government should dictate minimum safety standards. But once that’s done, if someone wants to go above and beyond, I would like to think we live in a country where we’re able to do that,” said Bill Fielding, chief operating officer for Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, based in Arkansas City, Kan.

Last month, the USDA turned down Creekstone’s request to test all its cattle -- which, like Gateway’s, are mostly young. Fielding has appealed that decision and is considering legal action. In the meantime, he’s making sure the USDA sees the more than 1,000 letters of support he’s received from consumers.

Politicians at the state and national levels have also taken up the fight.

California state Sen. Mike Machado (D-Linden) has introduced legislation that would permit the state’s 22,000 beef producers to test their cattle for BSE. If it passes, the bill would set up a direct confrontation with the USDA.

In Washington, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) has urged the USDA to stand firm against private testing. But Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) has taken the agency to task. In a letter last month to Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman, Boxer wrote: “I fail to understand why we would prevent our farmers and ranchers from using the best practices to protect people from the dreadful results of mad cow disease.”

Scientists say there’s very little, if any, public health value to the testing Creekstone and Gateway have proposed.

Clinical studies have shown it takes at least 30 months for mad cow disease to show up in most cattle, even if they’re fed massive amounts of infectious material.

At the height of the BSE epidemic in Britain, one 20-month-old and one 21-month-old were found to be infected. But every other confirmed case worldwide -- more than 180,000 so far -- has been in an older animal, the vast majority at least 30 months old, according to Will Hueston, director of the Center for Animal Health and Food Safety at the University of Minnesota.

Since Creekstone and Gateway slaughter exclusively young cattle, testing at those plants would have “no scientific value,” Hueston said.

“It would be like going into an elementary school and testing for Alzheimer’s. They’re all going to be negative,” said Leon Thacker, director of the Animal Disease Diagnostic Lab at Purdue University.

Still, Thacker understands why a beef producer would want to test, if only to reassure his best-paying customer: “I can see both sides of this one.”