Meat sent to Nevada may be tied to mad cow

Emily Gersema

Monday, Dec. 29, 2003 | 11:24 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Investigators and retailers in eight states and a territory are scrambling to recover meat that may have come from a Holstein stricken with deadly mad cow disease.

Agriculture Department officials maintain, meanwhile, there is no health risk to consumers.

Dr. Ron De Haven, chief veterinary officer at the USDA, reiterated that point today.

"We know from scientific research" that the agent that causes the disease "does not go into muscle tissue or the meat cuts but resides primarily in the central nervous system, the brain and the spinal cord," he said on NBC's "Today" show. DeHaven described the danger as "certainly minuscule risk, if any risk at all."

"We're, again, taking this action out of an abundance of precaution and not out of any real risk to public safety," he told CBS' "The Early Show."

Dr. Kenneth Petersen, a department veterinarian, said Sunday that an investigation revealed that meat from the infected dairy cow could have reached retail markets in Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho and Montana and the territory of Guam -- more locations than originally thought.

Officials had said earlier that most of the meat went to Washington and Oregon, with lesser amounts to California and Nevada, for retail sale.

"The recalled meat represents essentially zero risk to consumers," said Petersen, of USDA's food safety agency.

He said parts most likely to carry infection -- the brain, spinal cord and lower intestine -- were removed before the meat from the infected cow was cut and processed for human consumption.

Despite their assurances of food safety, federal officials have taken the precaution of recalling 10,000 pounds of meat from the infected cow and from 19 other cows slaughtered Dec. 9 at Vern's Moses Lake Meat Co., in Moses Lake, Wash.

DeHaven said today that there are no plans to expand the recall.

Because it is not known exactly what portions of the meat cut that day came from the diseased cow, health authorities must assume that some could have reached any location where any part of the 10,000-pound supply was distributed.

Officials still are recovering meat and won't know how much was found for days, Petersen said.

Mad cow disease, known formally as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, is a concern because humans who eat brain or spinal matter from an infected cow can develop a brain-wasting illness, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. During a mad cow outbreak in the 1980s, 143 people died of it in Britain.

Petersen said the slaughtered cow was deboned at Midway Meats in Centralia, Wash., and sent Dec. 12 to two other plants, Willamette Valley Meat and Interstate Meat, both near Portland, Ore.

Willamette also received beef trimmings, which were sold to three dozen small, mom-and-pop Asian and Mexican facilities in Washington, Oregon, California and Nevada, officials said.

Several Western supermarket chains -- Albertsons, Fred Meyer, Safeway and WinCo Foods -- have voluntarily removed ground beef products from the affected distributors. Safeway has said it will look for another supplier.

As the investigation continues, the list of countries banning U.S. beef imports is growing. Jordan and Lebanon joined the list Sunday. U.S. beef industry officials estimated earlier they lost 90 percent of their export market because of the bans by more than two dozen nations.