Mad cow crisis affects appetites

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2004 | 11:04 a.m.

Benjamin Chen, manager of 99 Ranch Market at Chinatown Plaza on Spring Mountain Road, recalled with some nostalgia Monday how his father would give him cow's brains as a boy in Taiwan because it "made him smarter."

Until recently, his store sold about 500 pounds of brains a week to the Las Vegas Valley's Asian community that follows similar customs.

Marcos Nuncio, outside MexiTaco on Sunset Road at lunchtime Monday, eats tacos made of small intestine three times a week, a custom he brought with him from Mexico City.

As new federal regulations springing from the mad cow crisis took effect Monday prohibiting the sale of brains and other parts from cattle 30 months and older -- as well as small intestines from all cattle -- Asians and Hispanics began realizing how the rules would hit them in their hearts and wallets.

The regulations, effective as of their publication in Monday's Federal Register, ban parts of the cow considered at-risk of harboring the so-called mad cow disease, including the brain, skull, nervous system and eyes of cattle nearly 3 years old and older, and small intestines.

About 7,600 United States Department of Agriculture inspectors will be enforcing the law at 6,500 meat processing plants nationwide, an official from that agency said. When the supply of the banned parts currently on the market runs out, restaurants and supermarkets will find that those plants no longer offer them for sale, the official said.

This means that thousands of meals across the valley will be altered, from Christmastime gatherings to feast on cattle heads in the Mexican community to a dish called "fire intestine" still on the menu at Chinatown's Emperor's Garden.

Nuncio, on hearing of the news, offered a Mexican expletive unfit for print in a family newspaper.

"On the one hand, it's good that they're taking care of people ... (but) it's very difficult to be so far from home, and then they take away your food on top of it," he said.

Alan Chen -- no relation to Benjamin -- owner of Emperor's Garden, said his waiters will be telling Chinese customers that the change is needed "to protect public safety."

Benjamin Chen said he had already gotten a jump on the new law. Chen pulled brains and small intestines from his store's shelves the day after learning of the nation's first reported case of mad cow on the news several weeks ago.

"My meat manager called me and asked if I had seen it on TV," Chen said.

"I told him to pull the parts from the store the next day."

The manager said he made his decision "to avoid any problems." His concern was not only with the Asian customers who buy the parts of the cow now banned nationwide, but for the image he would give those customers who aren't Asian -- about 15 percent of the store's traffic.

He said the potential loss of business -- about 1,000 pounds every week between cattle brains and small intestines -- was offset by the greater danger of bad publicity or his store's liability if a customer should get sick.

Over at Los Compadres Meat Market on 4545 E. Tropicana Avenue, butcher Humberto Gutierrez said he sold about 10 cattle heads in December.

"It's a traditional dish from the central part of Mexico ... where the whole family gathers and cooks the head in water with spices," he said.

The store also sells intestines -- though he wasn't sure if it was the small intestine -- which Mexicans use to prepare tacos at home.

On hearing of the new law, he said losing sales of these items would hurt his and other stores catering to Hispanics valley-wide. But customers would hurt more, Gutierrez said.

"Stores will feel the pain economically, but people are going to feel it more on a personal level," he said.

That the banned parts of cows are an ingrained part of different ethnic communities is made clear at local Asian and Mexican stores and restaurants.

Alan Chen said that "only Chinese order" his dish using intestines. "It's on the menu ... because Chinese look for these things," he said.

Larry Hughes, owner of Larry's Great Western Meats, at 420 S. Valley View Boulevard, sells about 3,000 pounds of small intestines and 300 to 400 pounds of brains a week.

And while most of those sales go to Mexican restaurants, "it's not the upper-end Mexican restaurants who buy it," he said. "It's the real ones where the Hispanics eat, where you can buy a 50-cent taco. Those are the ones that use it."

In the end, Gutierrez said, many of the estimated 368,000 Hispanics across the valley -- about 70 percent of whom are of Mexican descent -- will just have to get used to the new rules.

Rosa Hernandez, the cashier at MexiTaco, pointed out that Mexicans still have their most important staples -- corn and peppers.

"As long as we have tortillas and hot sauce, we'll be fine," she said. "If you took those away, it would be like cutting off our hands."

Benjamin Chen had a similar attitude.

"People will probably just change to pork brains," he said.

"The concept is the same -- brain is good for the brain."