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Third Mad Cow Case Confirmed

Posted on: Thursday, 16 March 2006, 15:00 CST

By Joe Ruff, Omaha World-Herald, Neb.

Mar. 14--A third U.S. case of mad cow disease was confirmed Monday in a cow in Alabama.

The cow, unable to walk, was killed by a local veterinarian and buried on a farm. It appeared to be about 10 years old, and it did not enter the food supply for people or animals, said John Clifford, chief veterinary officer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

A routine test last week indicated presence of the disease, and results were confirmed at a government laboratory in Ames, Iowa, Clifford said.

The cow had been on the Alabama farm for less than a year. Investigators were trying to determine where it was born and raised and its precise age.

Clifford said the animal might have been born before a 1997 federal ban on using cattle remains in cattle feed. Contaminated feed is the most likely way to transmit the disease among cattle.

Nebraska Agriculture Department Director Greg Ibach said the cow was a Santa Gertrudis, a cross of Indian Brahman and British Shorthorn. The breed is not commonly raised in Nebraska, Ibach said.

Two other cases of mad cow disease have been confirmed in the United States. The first was in December 2003 in a Canadian-born cow in Washington state; the second was last June in a cow born and raised in Texas.

Eating meat products contaminated with mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, has been linked to the deaths of more than 150 people, mostly in Britain, from a rare and fatal nerve disease.

The latest case of mad cow disease in U.S. cattle comes only two months after Japan reinstated its ban on U.S. beef because one shipment contained prohibited risk materials. Japan had eased its 2-year-old ban in December, only to suspend beef trade again in January.

Hong Kong also has suspended beef shipments from a Swift & Co. plant in Greeley, Colo., after cattle parts banned by Hong Kong were found in a shipment last week.

However, Ibach said he did not expect this third case of mad cow disease to affect domestic markets or foreign trade in beef. Nor should it complicate negotiations with Japan, Ibach said, because that country had originally accepted steps taken by the United States to protect against mad cow disease.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Omaha World-Herald, Neb.

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Source: Omaha World-Herald

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