Second Case of Mad Cow Traced to Texas

WASHINGTON – The second case of mad cow disease in the United States has been traced to a cow born in Texas 12 years ago and slaughtered last November at plant for pet food, Agriculture Department officials said Wednesday.

The department’s chief veterinarian, Dr. John Clifford, said the cow was identified and linked to the herd in Texas through DNA testing. He said the herd had been quarantined and that none of the infected carcass entered the food chain or for use as animal feed.

“The animal did not enter the human food chain. The safety of our food supply is not in question,” Clifford said in teleconference call with reporters. He said the government would not release the location of the herd.

He said that the time of the cow’s infection could not be pinpointed, but given its age, officials believe it probably was infected before the 1997 ban forbidding the use of cattle parts in cattle feed.

Eating the brain and other nervous tissue of an animal with the brain-wasting ailment is the only confirmed way the disease is transmitted.

The Agriculture Department confirmed the case last Friday but had to wait for DNA analysis to confirm the cow’s origin. Tracing the cow proved difficult because the animal’s breed was mislabeled and its tissues got mixed with parts from other cows. It was killed at a pet food plant in Waco, Texas.

Officials suspected last November that the cow was infected because initial screening had indicated the presence of the disease. But more sophisticated tests came back negative, and officials announced then that the suspect cow was free of the ailment.

The conflicting test results bothered the department’s internal watchdog, who ordered a new round of tests earlier this month. Those results came back positive, and an internationally recognized laboratory in Weybridge, England, confirmed last Friday that the cow had mad cow disease.

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Associated Press writer Suzanne Gamboa contributed to this report.