Scope of beef recall expands

SEATTLE — Recalled meat from a Washington State dairy cow infected with mad cow disease could have reached retail markets in eight western states and the U.S. territory of Guam, federal officials said Sunday.

The meat still poses no health risk, U.S. Agriculture Department officials said Sunday.

Dr. Kenneth Petersen, an Agriculture Department veterinarian, said investigators have determined that some of the meat from the diseased dairy cow slaughtered Dec. 9 in Washington state could have gone to Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana and Guam. Earlier, officials had said most of the meat went to Washington and Oregon, with lesser amounts to California and Nevada, for distribution to consumers.

Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), is associated with a fatal brain-wasting syndrome in humans called variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease. It gives the brain a spongelike appearance, there is no cure and 154 people have died from it, mostly in Britain.

In the strongest indication so far that significant amounts of the recalled meat have been eaten, about 100 consumers have called Agriculture hotlines to say they have consumed the recalled meat and are worried about their health.

Most of the calls came from people living in Oregon and Washington state, said Daniel Puzo, a USDA spokesman. Consumers in the region have also told at least two major grocery chains that they have eaten recalled beef, most of it in the form of hamburger.

"The calls started coming on the 24th of December, after the recall was announced, and they are still coming in," Puzo said.

Consumers apparently have been able to figure out if they and their families ate the recalled beef because grocery store recalls have been quite precise. They have referred to specific grades of lean ground beef on sale in specific stores for about nine days before Christmas.

Callers to the USDA hotlines have been assured that the recalled meat is completely safe to eat, Puzo said, and that the federal recall grows out of an abundance of caution, rather than any known health threat.

Worried consumers have also been told that there is no scientific evidence showing that people can contract the human variant of mad cow disease when beef has been slaughtered in a way that strips brain and spinal cord tissue away from muscle. The USDA said the infected dairy cow was slaughtered in this way.

The geographical range of worried calls, however, seems likely to expand after Sunday’s announcement that the distribution of the recalled beef has moved well beyond the four states previously mentioned by the USDA.

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. Because it is not known exactly what portions of the 10,000 pounds slaughtered there that day actually came from the diseased cow, health authorities must work on the possibility that some meat from the diseased cow could have reached any location where any part of the 10,000 pounds was distributed.

U.S. officials said Sunday that they have made some progress in clarifying the origin of the infected dairy cow, which an ear tag shows came from Alberta, Canada, where another case of mad cow disease was discovered in May.

The dairy cow, a Holstein, was part of a herd of 74 dairy cows imported in August 2001, officials have said. All those cows were eventually sold later that year to the Sunny Dene Ranch, in Mabton. It was from that 4,000-cow dairy farm, now under quarantine, that the infected cow and the 19 others were sent for slaughter in Moses Lake.

When U.S. officials announced on Saturday the probable Alberta origin of the infected animal, there was dispute between American and Canadian officials about the age of the animal identified by the ear tag. Canadian records showed it was 6 years old, while American records suggested it was about two years younger.

Some of that confusion has now been sorted out, according to Ron DeHaven, deputy administrator and chief veterinary officer for the USDA.

Based on information provided by the farm manager at the Sunny Dene Ranch, DeHaven said it now appears that the infected animal was an older milk cow and its birth date fits Canadian records.

DeHaven said definitive identification of the herd where the infected cow was born will await the results of DNA testing, due this week.

Meanwhile, U.S. agriculture officials flew to Japan on Sunday to address concerns in the world’s largest market for American beef about the discovery of the first case of mad cow disease in the United States.

Japan, which bought more than $1 billion of U.S. beef last year, joined more than two dozen nations that suspended imports after a cow in Washington state tested positive for the disease last week.

A delegation from the U.S. Department of Agriculture led by David Hegwood, a trade adviser to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, was scheduled to meet with Japanese officials in Tokyo today.