Tracing History of Infected Cow May Take Time

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December 27, 2003Tracing History of Infected Cow May Take TimeBy RICHARD A.

OPPEL Jr. and DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

 

WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 — Federal authorities said on Friday that it could take

weeks or months to trace where a dairy cow in Washington State with the nation's

first case of mad cow disease was born — and that investigators might not

succeed at all.

 

Finding the birthplace and the " birth herd " of the diseased Holstein dairy cow,

which was slaughtered on Dec. 9, are crucial to determine whether other cattle

may have also contracted mad cow disease. The disease, a degenerative brain

ailment known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is believed to take at least

four years to incubate.

 

Since the diseased cow was 4 1/2 years old, investigators say they believe it

was probably infected by eating contaminated feed at a young age — feed that

could have also been eaten by other calves.

 

A delay or failure to find the birth herd would probably intensify the already

growing number of calls for a national system to track cattle. But as a

practical matter, regardless of whether the Holstein's origin is found, federal

officials will also come under heavy pressure to increase other regulation and

testing.

 

Regulators will face demands, for example, to eliminate all brain and spinal

material from adult cattle from the human food supply. Other demands are sure to

include mandatory testing of brain cells from slaughtered cattle that have shown

signs of nervous conditions or, as was the case with the cow in Washington, were

unable to stand.

 

" If we're lucky, we could know something within a matter of a day or two, " said

Dr. Ron DeHaven, the chief veterinarian of the Department of Agriculture, in a

conference call with reporters on Friday. But, he added: " It might not be a

matter of days. It could be a matter of weeks or months, and there's always that

possibility that because of lack of records we might not be able to absolutely

determine that at all. "

 

The authorities said a second herd of cows in Washington that includes one

offspring of the diseased Holstein was quarantined on Wednesday. That herd, in

Sunnyside, includes about 400 bull calves. The herd that contained the diseased

cow and its only other living calf had already been quarantined in Mabton,

Wash., at the Sunny Dene ranch, officials say. The authorities emphasized it was

unlikely that the sickness had been passed down to the Holstein's calves, as the

disease is thought to be transmitted by consuming contaminated feed.

 

Cattle prices continued to plunge on Friday as traders worried that fears about

contaminated meat, which can cause a fatal disease in humans, would sharply

decrease demand for beef. Futures contracts for delivery of live cattle in

February fell the maximum one-day amount, 3 cents per pound, on the Chicago

Mercantile Exchange, closing at 86.175 cents per pound.

 

Fears of sharply lower demand have been fueled by moves by top importers,

including Japan and South Korea, to block shipments of American beef. About 10

percent of beef produced in the United States, worth more than $3 billion, is

exported annually.

 

Agriculture Department officials will fly to Japan on Saturday to try to

reassure officials there about the beef supply. Japan buys about one-third of

American exports of beef, veal and other beef products, worth $1 billion in

2002. Losing the Japanese market is " a significant drop, " said Keith Collins,

the chief economist of the Agriculture Department.

 

The White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, speaking aboard Air Force One

en route to Crawford, Tex., said it was " kind of early to determine the economic

impact. " Seeking to assuage the public's fear, he said President Bush " has eaten

beef in the last couple of days. "

 

Given what is known about how mad cow disease is transmitted, if the diseased

cow was born in the United States, it is possible its initial owner failed to

follow federal rules put into place in 1997 forbidding the use of proteins

derived from processed cattle as feed for cows.

 

" Far and away, the most likely means of spread of the disease is by an animal

consuming protein that came from an animal that is infected with the disease, "

Dr. DeHaven said. " The birth premises, " he added, is " most likely where the

exposure occurred. "

 

Asked whether the diseased cow came from Canada, where a case of mad cow disease

was diagnosed in May, Dr. DeHaven said it was " premature for us to speculate. "

He said it was possible the cow had been on a dairy farm near Mabton or a nearby

livestock market. " But from there, the epidemiological investigation becomes a

tangled web of different possibilities, " he said, that include Canada,

Washington or other states.

 

From records on the diseased cow's dairy farm, investigators can tell it was

purchased in October 2001. But they cannot tell yet whether it came from a

livestock market or from a dairy " finishing farm " where female calves are

prepared to become milk cows. The owner bought more than 100 dairy cows that

month from a finishing farm, officials said.

 

In the fragmented dairy industry, calves born to dairy cows are often sold to

finishing farms, where they are weaned and brought up on grain until they are

about 2 years old, when they are impregnated and ready to calve and be milked.

Then they are sold to a dairy farm. A bull calf may go to a different kind of

finishing farm, where it may be raised for stud or fattened for slaughter.

 

Agriculture Department officials say the difficulty in tracking the diseased

cow's past demonstrates how much the country needs a national system for

tracking animals from birth to slaughter, as there is in New Zealand and some

other countries. Currently, some animals in Western states are given numbered

ear tags when they are inoculated against brucellosis, and some states have laws

that require that a cow's brand be recorded whenever it is sold. But these are

not considered efficient ways of tracking cattle.

 

" This will speed the momentum for a national identification system, " said Dr.

Will Hueston, a professor of public health and veterinary medicine at the

University of Minnesota and an expert in mad cow disease.

 

Dr. Valerie E. Ragan, the deputy chief veterinarian for the Agriculture

Department, said the agency had a team of 100 people from the federal

government, the states and industry working to create a national tracking

system. Federal officials, she said, envision having cattle fitted with

electronic ear tags that have a visible number on the outside as well as a chip

on the inside that can be read either with a hand-held scanner or as the animal

passes through a large detector.

 

Even if the Washington State animal's birth herd is found, it is not necessarily

going to be possible to figure out what the calf ate that led to its infection,

said Dr. Stephen Sundlof of the Food and Drug Administration, who joined Dr.

DeHaven on the news conference on Friday.

 

" Think yourself what you might have eaten four and a half years ago, " he said.

" That's not the kind of thing people keep really accurate records on. "

 

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

 

 

 

 

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