As part of an ongoing effort to reassure American consumers and foreign trading partners, U.S. agriculture officials announced Monday that they would destroy an entire herd of calves on a Washington state feedlot because they cannot determine which of them is the progeny of a Holstein infected with mad cow disease.
The 450 or so month-old calves will be taken to an unused slaughterhouse in Washington state during the next week and “properly euthanized,” said Ron DeHaven, chief veterinary officer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. None of the calves’ meat or byproducts will enter the human food chain or be rendered into animal feed, he said.
4,000 cows quarantined
The calves are being destroyed even though DeHaven said the chances that the disease spread from the infected cow to its offspring were “very remote.” Another 4,000 cows are being quarantined pending the outcome of the government’s investigation into the source of the single mad cow case announced Dec. 23.
“We have made a decision to depopulate those bull calves,” DeHaven said, adding that the USDA would pay the farmer “fair market value” for the calves. He said the timing of the event would depend on logistical issues and “weather concerns” in the Yakima, Wash., area.
The calves will not be tested for mad cow disease because the disease normally does not appear in cows until they are at least 30 months old. DeHaven would not say how the carcasses would be destroyed, though he indicated that “extreme measures” such as incineration would not be necessary because the animals are so young.
Another offspring of the diseased cow remains on a quarantined farm in Mabton, Wash., though no decision has been made on its fate.
The decision to slaughter the calves represents the first time cows in the U.S. have been destroyed in connection with mad cow disease. Millions of cattle have been destroyed in England since its mad cow outbreak in the late 1980s.
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Canada destroyed 2,700 cows and quarantined 18 farms during its investigation into a single case of mad cow disease announced last May, officials there said.
U.S. officials said, however, that it is not uncommon for livestock to be destroyed to prevent the spread of disease. For instance, last year millions of chickens in California were destroyed to prevent the spread of exotic Newcastle disease, a fatal poultry virus.
Monday’s announcement marks the latest effort by the U.S. government to convince consumers and foreign governments that American beef is safe to eat. Last week, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman announced a series of moves that included prohibiting diseased or crippled cattle from entering the food supply and launching a national identification system for cattle.
Meanwhile, USDA officials are planning to travel this week to Mexico to persuade authorities there to lift their ban on U.S. beef. Mexico is one of more than three dozen countries to close their borders to American beef since the discovery of the diseased cow. USDA officials already have traveled to Japan, America’s largest beef importer, to make a similar pitch.
`Joker in the deck’
Monte Reese, chief operating officer for the Cattlemen’s Beef Board, said getting countries to lift their bans on U.S. beef is often complicated by other trade issues.
“The joker in the deck is the fact that these export bans are, to some extent, a bit of a negotiating chip in World Trade Organization affairs,” he said in Chicago. “That’s what makes it so doggone unpredictable.”
Mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is primarily caused by feeding cows rendered brains and spinal tissue from cows infected with the disease, a practice that was banned in the U.S. and Canada in 1997. The human form of the disease, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, has killed about 150 people and is caused by eating infected material from cows.
Reese of the Beef Board said the beef industry was “starting to see some signs that the shock is over and the marketplace is returning to some semblance of reality.” Interviewed for the television program “U.S. Farm Report,” he said the USDA has been “prudent in reassuring consumers” about the safety of American beef.
“Perhaps they’ve gone farther than what was necessary, but if you’re a consumer, don’t you appreciate that kind of extra measure of reassurance?” Reese said.