'Mad Cow' Fears in Texas
NewsMax.com Wires Saturday, Jan. 27, 2001
WASHINGTON (UPI) – More than 1,200 head of Texas cattle were under quarantine Friday because they were given a type of feed that could lead to "mad cow" disease.
Purina Mills, the largest livestock feed producer in the United States, confirmed it prepared feed laced with ruminant byproducts for cattle on a Gonzales, Texas, feedlot last week.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration ordered the 1,222 cattle on the lot quarantined as a precautionary measure.
The news sent feeder cattle futures falling in Friday morning trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
Mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE, ravaged the British beef industry. It is believed people eating meat from cows suffering from the disease, which attacks the central nervous system, can contract a fatal human variant, Creutzfeld-Jakob disease. Eighty-three Britons are believed to have died from eating infected beef.
Cases of mad cow also have been reported elsewhere in Europe, with Portugal planning to slaughter 50,000 head of cattle to head off further infection. British scientists this week warned officials in Thailand an outbreak of the disease could be in the offing in the Southeast Asian country within four years, since British feed was exported to Asia at the height of the British outbreak.
Although no mad cow cases ever have been reported in the United States, officials in Maine have ordered routine testing of cattle and deer slaughtered in that state as part of a prevention program.
The FDA has forbidden U.S. feed makers from mixing products from other animals into feed for ruminants like cows and sheep.
Dr. Murray Lumpkin, senior medical adviser at the FDA, said samples of the feed are being tested to determine whether any animal parts were indeed mixed in. He said if that did occur, the situation would be further investigated.
"We do know that the feed was American in origin," Lumpkin said. "So there is no evidence at this point in time that the feed that the cows might have gotten might have been infected with BSE. Chances of that are very, very small.
"The bottom line is if we feel there was any exposure to a human safety issue, we will not allow them into the food chain."
Animal byproducts are added to feed as a protein supplement.
Purina Mills said workers at its Gonzales plant accidentally mixed a small amount of ruminant meat and bone meal into feed for a nearby feedlot. The company said the mix-up involved 22 tons of feed mixed the evening of Jan. 16. All was destined for the same location.
Dr. Konrad Eugster, the director of the Texas Veterinary Diagnostic Lab at Texas A&M University, said the United States has been lucky so far.
"These rules that the FDA put in a few years ago [banning animal byproducts from cattle feed] is a precautionary rule, and we certainly are ahead of the game," he said. Though the Purina Mills action is a violation of that rule, "at this time it is not a public health concern."
"We don't have mad cow disease in the United States. Since the meat and bone meal originated from U.S. cattle, they also do not have mad cow disease," he said.
See more articles on mad cow disease.
Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved.
-- Uncle Bob (unclb0b@aol.com), January 29, 2001