KANSAS CITY, Mo. – If mad cow disease struck the American beef industry, producers fear their losses could be in the billions of dollars.
An outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the U.S. such as the crisis experienced in Britain could cost about $4.5 billion for destruction of cattle and another $9 billion in annual sales losses.
The disease’s hypothetical impact on sales was discussed in a sub-committee meeting during the National Cattlemen’s Association convention held Jan. 29-Feb. 1.
A number of steps have been taken in the last 10 years to ensure BSE stays out of the United States, said Burt Mitchell of the Food and Drug Administration during the meeting.
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The most recent move to keep out the fatal brain wasting disease came from the FDA in Washington. It proposed on Jan. 2 to ban the use of mink or ruminant derived protein supplements in the diets of animals like cattle, goats, sheep, elk or deer. The committee later supported a resolution to keep proteins made of bovine offal out of feed rations.
The FDA estimates the economic impact of such a prohibition could cost renderers between $21.4 and $48.2 million. The total estimated value of all ruminant-derived meat and bone meal produced in the U.S. last year was $523 million.
A real problem for many producers is how to handle animals that die on the farm or the feedyard. In some states, renderers refuse to take them for fear they have the disease, said veterinarian Don Hansen. He is also chair of the food safety committee of the American Bovine Practitioners’ Association.
Landfills don’t want dead cows so incinerating and then burying the remains may be the only answer, said Hansen.
If the disease turned up in Canada or Mexico in animals born there, beef would be rejected or subject to intense scrutiny and preparation, said Gary Weber of the NCBA.
The same rule would apply to American beef if such cases were detected. Meat would have to be deboned. In addition, all fat and nerve tissue would have to be removed, according to health and trade agreements.
“There is no clause that says when you could go back to marketing or importing beef in a traditional matter,” he said.
Handle emergencies
Some review of the regulations is necessary for future emergencies, Weber said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has maintained a BSE surveillance program since 1985. It has never found a case of the disease but when the news broke in the United Kingdom last March that eating meat from BSE-infected cows could cause a similar brain wasting condition in humans called Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, efforts were stepped up to ensure the disease was not present in the U.S.
So far the USDA has examined more than 5,300 brains from animals showing symptoms of central nervous system diseases and found no trace of BSE, said Mitchell.
The U.S. has not imported any British beef since 1985 and the government has tracked and monitored all British cattle imported to the U.S. prior to 1989. Animals born from embryos or semen imported from the U.K. are acceptable.
Little is actually known about any of the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies said Mitchell. In Britain’s case, most scientists suspect it was carried by a carrier called a prion that didn’t die in the rendering process. Others fear it could occur spontaneously.
“Biologically it is a possibility,” Mitchell said.
The sub committee got a resolution passed that supports the USDA ban on importing cattle and related byproducts from any country that has cattle infected with BSE.
