Nevada bans dairy cows from Washington state

By Mary Manning

Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2003 | 11:05 a.m.

Nevada officials said Tuesday they were optimistic that a single Holstein at a farm in Washington state that tested positive for mad cow disease is not the beginning of an epidemic.

Still, as a safety precaution, the Nevada Department of Agriculture on Tuesday banned dairy cows originating in Washington from entering Nevada, state veterinarian Dr. David Thain said.

The announcement came after the U.S. Agriculture Department said Verns Moses Lake Meats, a Moses Lake, Wash., company, was voluntarily recalling more than 10,400 pounds of raw beef that may have been exposed to the disease.

Additionally, a USDA spokeswoman said that investigators from the agency were inspecting two plants in Oregon -- Willamette Valley Meat Company, in Portland and Interstate Meat Distributors, Inc., in Clackamas -- and Midway Meats in Centralia, Wash., for possible infection.

The official said those plants may have been used to process meat from Verns Moses Lake. She also said it was not clear where meat from any of the plants being investigated may have been distributed.

Nevada food suppliers tried to assure the public that the chances of any contaminated beef reaching the state's consumers was slim, and dairy farmers said the threat to local cows was distant.

By tracking cows in Nevada through health certificates issued by the state, inspectors can pinpoint whether any of the animals came from the Washington ranch where the infected animal was found, Thain said.

In the next weeks and months, state agriculture inspectors will track down any cows that came to Nevada from Washington since January 1998, Thain said.

The inspectors have records from 27 truckloads of cattle that arrived in Nevada since then to sort and review.

"We've been looking for this disease in 20,000 animals a year in the state and not one has exhibited the illness," Thain said.

Nevada exports most of its cattle, he said. Only about 1 percent of the cattle raised in Nevada is slaughtered and butchered in the state.

The agent that causes bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, eats holes in the brains of cattle, Thain said. Evidence of the disease is found in the brains and spinal cords of infected cattle.

A form of mad cow disease can be contracted by humans if they eat infected beef or nerve tissue, and possibly through blood transfusions. Local blood supplier United Blood Services bans military personnel and foreigners who may have been exposed to mad cow disease from donating blood.

The human form of mad cow disease so far has killed 143 people in Britain and 10 in other countries; none has died of the disease in the United States.

Thain said the Washington cow is likely an isolated case.

"Quite frankly, that beef Wellington (for the holidays) is safe to eat, not only in Nevada, but the United States as a whole," Thain said.

Beef industry representatives worry that the biggest problem will be the public reaction to the news.

"It's going to have some kind of an effect, no matter what we do," said Steve Lucas, president of Lucas Livestock in Paradise Valley and chairman of the Nevada Beef Council.

"Panic among consumers would amount to an over-reaction."

Howard Unruh, owner of Desert Meats and Provisions, which supplies beef to the resort industry in Southern Nevada, said he doesn't know of any Las Vegas company that acquires meat from sources in Washington state.

"Most of the meat we supply to our customers comes from the Midwest; it's preferred by our customers," Unruh said.

Unruh said that the Washington case appears to be a single, isolated incident, similar to two occurrences in Canada, one in May 2003 and another in 1993.

Conclusive testing has not been completed on the U.S. case, Unruh said. The source of the Canadian cases has never been found.

The president of Ricardo's Mexican Restaurants in Las Vegas says in his 25 years in the food-service industry he has never heard of a Southern Nevada company acquiring its beef from Washington state.

Bob Ansara, who also serves as a director on the National Restaurant Association and the Nevada Restaurant Association, said he isn't making any changes in the purchasing, preparation or specifications related to beef at his Mexican restaurants at present.

"We're not going to stop serving beef, but we will continue to be prudent, buy from approved sources and see how the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) digs into this," Ansara said. "The steps taken over the last four years by all the food-chain people, the growers, the suppliers and the packers have made the food supply safer than anytime in the history of humankind."

Ansara said he doesn't expect a detrimental impact on the food industry in Southern Nevada.

"I don't believe there will be any impact whatsoever at this stage of the game," Ansara said. "Obviously, we're going to be watching any subsequent developments."

However, author Sheldon Rampton, who co-authored "Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?" with John Stauber, said that he was not surprised that the disease had arrived in the United States.

"I don't want to scare people about the food we're eating, but as citizens we should expect more than public relations measures from the food industry," Rampton said.

The USDA waited until 1997 before prohibiting cattle remains from being fed to cows in the United States, Rampton said.

"I'm not sure the ban has been effective," Rampton said.

The mad cow disease discovered in Washington could hurt U.S. beef exports to other countries, Rampton said. Japan and Korea had announced a ban on U.S. beef Tuesday.

When Rampton and Stauber researched their book, they discovered that American meat inspectors didn't test every animal, only a small percentage.

Nevertheless, the federal government could do a better job to protect consumers and cattle, Rampton said.

"If one case has been detected, others could have been missed," he said. "On the other hand, if I were going to bet, I would say it is unlikely there will be an epidemic here the size of the one in England."

A spokesman for Anderson Dairy, Southern Nevada's largest milk processing plant, said the discovery in Washington would have no effect on local milk products.

Dave Coon said Las Vegas-based Anderson does not acquire raw milk from Washington dairy farmers.

"We don't get any milk from that part of the country," Koon said, citing Nevada, California, Arizona and Utah as the source for most of Southern Nevada's milk needs.

"And if it doesn't affect dairy cows, it wouldn't affect us," he said. "We don't anticipate any impact on our ability to process milk."

For Amargosa Valley rancher Ralph McCracken, the occurrence of mad cow disease is a distant threat to Southern Nevada, because most of the dairy cattle are in "closed herds," meaning they are kept separate from other cows in other states.

But the nature of a cow's eating habits raises a concern, McCracken said.

"Cows are scroungers," he said.

There is one certain method to prevent mad cow disease: stop using spinal cords and brains in animal feed, including dog food.

"Until it is absolutely prohibited from all animal food, you're still going to have this disease," McCracken said.

Sun reporters

Richard Velotta, Kevin Rademacher, Timothy Pratt and the Associated Press contributed to this story.