Democrats Criticize Bush on Beef Policy

Democratic candidates tried to turn “mad cow” disease to political advantage Sunday, accusing the White House of lax regulatory policies, as officials announced that meat from the cow infected with the disease had been distributed to four more states than previously thought.

During a daylong swing through Iowa, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean hammered away at the “mad cow” issue, scolding the administration for not doing enough to trace and test the nation’s cattle.

“The Bush administration had an opportunity to avoid this situation, and to save millions and millions of dollars for the beef industry in this country,” he told reporters at his Des Moines headquarters.

The front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination urged President Bush to back legislation that would prevent the slaughter of ill cattle and to establish a thorough tracking and testing system of the beef industry.

“We don’t have that tracing system because the Bush administration stubbornly refuses to look more than a week and a half into the future in almost any policy area that they consider,” Dean said.

Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, also campaigning in Iowa, called for similar efforts to protect public health, including a ban on selling beef brains and vertebrae and federal aid for farmers forced to slaughter their cattle.

“There are many in the cattle industry who will continue to resist much-needed changes,” Kerry said in a statement. “I urge President Bush for once not to listen to the demands of corporate America and act on behalf of the health and economic needs of all Americans.”

For good measure, a fellow Democratic candidate, Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, said in a statement that Bush “refuses to fund important country-of-origin labeling provisions for meat and has ignored the need for resources at the [Food and Drug Administration] and [the U.S. Department of Agriculture] to inspect the agricultural products coming across our borders.”

The White House on Sunday avoided responding to the charges. “The administration is confident in the job that the Agriculture Department is doing,” said Suzy DeFrancis, deputy White House communications director.

The USDA said meat from the Holstein that had tested positive for “mad cow” disease had gone to four other states and Guam, in addition to the four states officials had previously acknowledged.

Kenneth Petersen, a spokesman for the department’s Food Safety Inspection Service, said beef from the infected Holstein had been sent to Alaska, Montana, Hawaii, Idaho and the U.S. territory of Guam in the Pacific. Earlier, the government had named California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state.

Agriculture Department officials have ordered a recall of about 10,000 pounds of beef sent to the four states originally identified as having received shipments that originated at Verns Moses Lake Meat Co. in Moses Lake, Wash. The infected cow was slaughtered there Dec. 9.

Officials said they were contacting stores in the four additional states to track down beef that might have come from the infected cow.

But during a news conference Sunday, Dr. W. Ron DeHaven, chief veterinarian of the USDA, repeated the government’s assertion that the risk of transmission of the disease to consumers was remote. DeHaven said the organs believed to harbor the agent that causes “mad cow” disease -- brain and spinal tissue -- did not enter the food chain.

“The risk related to the consumption of this muscle meat is virtually zero,” he said. Muscle meat, used in steaks, hamburger and other food products, is thought to harbor little or none of the agent that causes the infection.

DeHaven added that a trade team from the U.S. plans to carry that message to Japan, where it will urge officials in Tokyo to reconsider that country’s ban on American beef in the wake of the USDA’s preliminary determination over the weekend that the infected Holstein had originally come from Canada.

Dr. Richard Breitmeyer, California’s chief veterinarian, said Sunday that USDA officials had informed him that some meat targeted in the recall might have been distributed to small ethnic markets in Northern California.

USDA spokesman Julie Quick said she could not confirm that information. And because the effort to track the meat was in its early stages, neither Breitmeyer nor Quick could say what fraction of the 10,000 pounds of recalled beef was on California’s grocery shelves.

“Mad cow” disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is believed to be transmitted to livestock through feed that contains the spine and other ground-up byproducts of infected cows. The U.S. enacted a ban on that type of feed in 1997. The disease has a four- to six-year incubation period in animals. Unlike most infectious bacterial or viral diseases, the agent believed to harbor the disease cannot be killed or neutralized by cooking or heat.

Dean, who munched on a cheeseburger for television cameras Saturday at a diner in Waterloo, Iowa, said he believed the risk of people contracting the human form of the disease by eating contaminated meat was small. The larger problem, he said, was the economic damage the scare would cause.

“The product is safe, I believe, but the panic has really hurt the industry,” Dean said Sunday. “And this, I think, is one of the notorious features of the Bush administration: Put off any additional safety concerns, push back on them because they must be related to do-gooders ... and that’s the attitude of the administration environmentally, financially, in terms of defense.”

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Bans on U.S. beef

These countries have banned U.S. beef because of a case of “mad cow” disease discovered in a Washington state Holstein:

* Argentina

* Australia

* Brazil

* Cambodia

* Canada (ban limited to processed meats)

* Chile

* China, including Hong Kong

* Colombia

* Costa Rica

* Egypt

* Indonesia

* Jamaica

* Japan

* Jordan

* Kuwait

* Lebanon

* Malaysia

* Mexico

* Nicaragua

* Peru

* Russia

* Singapore

* South Africa

* South Korea

* Taiwan

* Thailand

* Uruguay

* Venezuela

* Vietnam

U.S. Department of Agriculture officials say meat from the cow that tested positive for the disease has gone to eight states and Guam, a U.S. territory. The eight states are:

* Alaska

* California

* Hawaii

* Idaho

* Montana

* Nevada

* Oregon

* Washington

Sources: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Associated Press

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Gold reported from Iowa and Shiver from Washington, D.C. Times staff writers Edwin Chen in Crawford, Texas, and Richard Fausset in Los Angeles contributed to this report.