‘Mad Cow’ Case Tied to Feed; Little Human Risk Seen

Agriculture Department officials said Wednesday that the dairy cow that tested positive this week for “mad cow” disease, a first in the United States, probably contracted the illness through feed containing tainted animal parts, despite a federal ban on putting such materials in cattle feed.

Federal officials continued to describe the health risk to consumers as extremely low, yet economic damage to the beef industry mounted. Additional trading partners placed import bans on U.S. beef, and investors dumped meat and restaurant stocks. Cattle prices tumbled by their maximum allowable level.

Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman said Wednesday that the Holstein had come from a herd of about 4,000 dairy cows in southern Washington state, but federal officials said they presumed that the animal had contracted the disease through contaminated feed before joining that herd in October 2001. They were working to identify farms where it had previously lived and other cattle that had shared the same feed supplies.

The diseased cow was born about 1999, officials said, two years after a federal rule took effect that was designed to stop cattle from receiving tainted feed. Officials said they could not speculate whether a violation of the rule had led the animal to become infected.

The rule stated that cattle feed may not contain most proteins from mammals. It was intended to prevent a repeat of Britain’s “mad cow” crisis, in which the disease was thought to have infected more than 183,000 cattle in the 1980s and 1990s, primarily because proteins from diseased animals were fed to healthy ones.

Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine at the Food and Drug Administration, said compliance with the feed rule was only about 75% when it was enacted in 1997. It has since risen to 99%, he said.

The Agriculture Department also said the slaughterhouse that processed the diseased animal, Verns Moses Lake Meats of Moses Lake, Wash., had on Tuesday agreed voluntarily to recall all meat it handled on Dec. 9, the day the animal was slaughtered. That meat may have been exposed to the infectious agent that causes “mad cow” disease, Veneman said.

The recall covers 10,410 pounds of meat from the diseased animal and 19 others. Officials said they had identified three facilities where the carcasses underwent further processing after slaughter. But they were still working to locate the meat.

Late Wednesday, Albertsons Inc. announced that the recall affected some meat sold at its stores in Washington state, Oregon and northern Idaho. No other Albertson stores were affected, company officials said.

“People should continue to feel very confident in the safety of our meat supply,” Veneman said in a telephone news conference.

She and other officials emphasized that parts of the diseased animal considered most infectious -- the spinal cord, brain and a portion of the small intestine -- had never entered the food supply, and that only the muscle meat, which is thought to harbor little or none of the infectious agent, was sent for processing into steaks, hamburger or other food products.

“The meats produced are cuts that would not be expected to be infected or have an adverse public health impact, but are being recalled out of an abundance of caution,” Veneman said.

Known scientifically as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, “mad cow” disease is caused by a poorly understood agent that creates holes in the brain, causing it to look like a sponge. Eating meat that contains the agent is thought to cause a human form of BSE, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which has affected 153 people worldwide, nearly all in Britain. There is no known treatment for the disease, which is invariably fatal. Scientists do not know how long after eating infected meat a person may develop the disease, but it is probably “many years or decades,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Agriculture Department officials first announced the “mad cow” findings Tuesday. They said the animal was “presumptive positive,” based on two tests that Veneman has called the “gold standard” for BSE detection. Samples were to have arrived in Britain on Wednesday for confirming tests at a laboratory that specializes in the disease. Those tests will take three to five days.

Officials want to examine other animals that came from the “birth herd” of the diseased cow, as well as cattle it lived with elsewhere that may have eaten the same feed. But Dr. Ron DeHaven, the Agriculture Department’s chief veterinarian, said it was possible that no other cases would emerge.

“Even in those countries where the prevalence of the disease has been very high, it’s not uncommon at all -- in fact, more common -- that the number of animals that are infected within any herd is very small,” he said. “Very often, just one animal within a herd is found to be infected.”

A single cow with the disease was identified in Canada this year, and officials found no additional cases.

Still, the $175-billion beef industry braced for a sustained downturn. At least 12 nations have taken steps to ban imports of U.S. beef. They include Japan, Mexico and South Korea, the top three buyers, which account for almost 90% of U.S. beef exports.

Canada, the fourth-largest foreign purchaser, banned some U.S. beef products but said others could cross the border.

Cattle futures dropped by the maximum amount allowed by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. McDonald’s, the world’s largest seller of hamburgers, saw shares fall more than 5% on the New York Stock Exchange, while Tyson Foods, the country’s largest meat processor, dropped 7.7%.

The stock of Hercules, Calif.-based Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc., which makes a test for “mad cow” disease, jumped 20%.

Consumer advocacy and animal welfare groups said the incident pointed to gaps in the government’s surveillance system for “mad cow” disease. Some questioned why tests on the diseased animal were completed only on Monday and Tuesday, nearly two weeks after the cow was slaughtered.

“Thirteen days later? What sort of safety program is this?” asked Wayne Pacelle, senior vice president of the Humane Society of the United States. “This is not a firewall like they claim it is.”

DeHaven, the Agriculture Department veterinarian, said the animal was tested as part of a BSE surveillance program that takes samples from a portion of “downer” animals, or those unable to walk at the time they are presented for slaughter and are considered most likely to be diseased. The animal did not show signs of disease but had been paralyzed by apparent complications in giving birth, he said.

He said the samples arrived at an Agriculture Department laboratory in Ames, Iowa, on Dec. 11, two days after the slaughter, but were not tested until Dec. 16 or 17 because of a backlog at the lab. While speedier tests exist, DeHaven said, the Agriculture Department has stuck with a more time-consuming test that is also more reliable.

Some consumer and animal welfare groups said more animals should be tested to ensure the safety of the food supply. Although 20,526 cattle were tested for “mad cow” disease last year as part of the government surveillance program, Pacelle said that was a small fraction of the 130,000 to 190,000 “downer” cattle slaughtered each year.

One researcher said the testing regimen was more than adequate.

Dr. John Maas, of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, said that under standards set by the World Organization for Animal Health, a nongovernmental group with 165 member nations, only 430 or so animals would have to be tested to properly monitor for the disease in the United States.

“We’re doing about 46 times the amount of testing they recommend,” Maas said. “If we go with the best science, we seem to be adequate in our surveillance.”

The apparent “mad cow” case also revived questions about whether meat from “downer” animals should be allowed into the food supply and whether carcasses from those animals should be held at the slaughterhouse until disease testing is complete.

Under Agriculture Department rules, while the parts of a “downer” animal most likely to contain infection must be segregated from the food supply, it is legal to sell the meat for human consumption.

The Senate last month approved, on a voice vote, a measure prohibiting the Agriculture Department from allowing such meat into the food supply. During the summer, the House rejected similar language, voting 199 to 202.

Government and industry officials said that banning meat from “downer” cattle would remove animals from the food supply that have broken legs or other injuries and present no health threat to consumers.

In Mexico, Javier Trujillo, undersecretary for food safety and quality, said Wednesday that he had ordered the nation’s borders closed to U.S. beef and beef products late Tuesday. U.S. imports account for 15% of all beef consumed in Mexico.

“Mexico remains free [of “mad cow” disease] and will take the measures necessary to retain its privileged status in the international market,” Trujillo said in an interview.

The ban was relaxed somewhat late Wednesday. After consultations with U.S. agriculture officials, Mexico agreed to allow milk, cheese, leather and some other cattle-related products.

Russia imposed a temporary ban on imports of U.S. beef, as well as fodder and cattle proteins, “until the situation clears,” agriculture minister Alexei Gordeyev said.

U.S. products -- about 20,000 tons a year -- make up about 4% of all Russian meat imports.

At the posh Pacific Dining Car restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, where a steak can cost $40, chef Berty Siegelf was prepared for whatever questions and concerns customers might have. By Wednesday afternoon, Siegelf had already received what he described as a reassuring telephone call from the restaurant’s butcher.

“All of our beef is corn-fed and comes from Nebraska,” he said.

*

Times staff writers Hector Tobar in Mexico City, Kim Murphy in Moscow, Ronald D. White in Los Angeles and Maggie Farley in New York contributed to this report.