Farms brace for mad cow fallout

MABTON — Quarantines on state cattle expanded Friday as federal and state authorities sought to track the history of a Holstein from a Mabton dairy farm that was the nation’s first case of mad cow disease.

Though officials haven’t yet estimated the financial fallout from the case, the Bush administration told Congress in 2001 that the beef industry could lose $15 billion.

Food safety officials had earlier projected that as many as 300,000 cows could be destroyed if the disease spread like it did in Britain, a prospect diminished by safeguards implemented in response to the British experience with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.

There are 1.1 million cattle in Washington state, including 247,000 dairy cows, according to the Washington State Beef Commission. About 9,500 farmers and ranchers make their living from the cattle industry, with gross income of $621 million last year.

Gregg Doud, chief economist for the Denver-based National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said Friday that U.S. producers stand to lose at least $6 billion from export losses and falling prices.

"We’ve lost roughly 90 percent of our export market just in the last three days," he said.

Meanwhile, authorities quarantined a calf of the diseased cow, along with about 400 other animals, at a Sunnyside bull calf feeding operation.

Another calf remained under quarantine with the rest of the dairy herd in Mabton, where the animal that tested positive for the brain-wasting disease came from.

"The reason for concern with these calves is that even though it is an unlikely means of spreading the disease, there is the potential that the infected cow could pass the disease onto its calves," said Dr. Ronald DeHaven, the USDA’s chief veterinarian.

A government source familiar with the investigation said the infected cow came from the Sunny Dene Ranch in Mabton, about 40 miles southeast of Yakima. USDA officials have said a dairy in Mabton is under quarantine and that its herd would be slaughtered if the mad cow diagnosis was confirmed.

Mike Louisell, spokesman for the state Department of Agriculture, said a slaughter "is being discussed, but no decisions have been made."

Business appeared to continue as usual at the Mabton dairy Friday.

Dan Senn, an independent contractor from Granger hired to artificially inseminate cows at the dairy, said he was going ahead with his work until told otherwise.

State Agriculture Department officials were helping federal investigators trace the animal’s history and what happened to the meat from its carcass. "That’s what we’re doing, whatever’s needed," Deputy Agriculture Director Bill Brookreson said.

The emphasis of the widening investigation is on finding the birth herd of the slaughtered cow, since it likely was infected from eating contaminated feed. The incubation period for mad cow disease is four to five years.

"It could be from Washington state, it could be from another state, it could be from Canada," Louisell said. "At this point there’s not even speculation."

"This case is going to get resolved, in our opinion," he said. "We just don’t have all the answers yet."

Federal authorities said they were looking at two possible businesses that may have sold the infected cow to the Mabton farm in October 2001.

One is a livestock market and the other is described as a finishing facility for dairy heifers.

"We are only day three in what will no doubt be a very complex and complicated investigation," DeHaven said.

The case has brought international attention to Mabton, a town of 2,045 people. Dozens of dairies dot the area’s hills, along with fields of hops and wine grapes.

In March 2001, Bernard Schwetz, then the acting principal deputy commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, briefed the House Appropriations agriculture subcommittee, drawing on what happened in the United Kingdom.

"Based on the U.K. experience, if BSE were to be encountered in the U.S., it would not only have an obvious potential impact on our public health, but also a monumental impact on our beef industries, with initial U.S. revenue losses estimated to reach over $15 billion," Schwetz told the subcommittee.

That estimate was based on a 1998 British study of economic effects of the first year of the mad cow outbreak in the United Kingdom, where the disease was first detected in 1986.