| Meat from U.S. Holstein infected with mad cow reached 4 more states, Guam at 12:47 on December 28, 2003, EST. |
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McDonald's president in South Korea, Shin Un-Shik, carries products made with Australian beef Sunday in Seoul. South Korea formally banned imports of U.S. beef and cow parts on Saturday; the Korean letters on the sign read "Australian Beef". (AP/Lee Jin-man) WASHINGTON (CP) - U.S. investigators disclosed Sunday that they have found meat cut from a Holstein sick with mad cow disease was sent to four more states and one territory. Dr. Kenneth Petersen, an Agriculture Department veterinarian, said investigators have now determined that some of the meat from the cow slaughtered Dec. 9 went to Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana and Guam. Earlier, officials had said most of the meat went to Washington state and Oregon, with lesser amounts to California and Nevada, for distribution to consumers. He stressed, however, that the parts most likely to carry the infection - the brain, spinal cord and lower intestine - were removed before the meat from the infected cow was cut and processed for human consumption. "The recalled meat represents essentially zero risk to consumers," Petersen said. Although U.S. officials maintain the food supply is safe, they have recalled as a precaution an estimated 4,500 kilograms of meat from the infected cow and from 19 other cows all slaughtered Dec. 9 at Vern's Moses Lake Meat Co., in Moses Lake, Wash. Petersen, of the department's Food Safety and Inspection Service, said the department still is recovering meat and won't know if all of it has been returned until later this week. Agriculture Department investigators had tentatively traced the first U.S. cow with mad cow disease to Alberta, where another case of the infection was found last May, causing the United States and other countries to ban Canadian beef exports. However, Dr. Ron DeHaven, the department's chief veterinarian, emphasized Sunday that investigators aren't certain of that because U.S. records outlining the animal's history do not match ones in Canada. Canadian officials had complained it was premature to reach any firm conclusion. DeHaven said Sunday that DNA tests were being arranged to help resolve the matter. Canadian reports show the cow had two calves before export to the United States, contrary to U.S. documents which classified the animal as a heifer when it arrived, meaning it had never borne calves. Also, Canadian documents showed the diseased cow was 6� years old - older than U.S. officials had thought. U.S. records say the cow was four or 4�. Officials are concerned about the cow's age because it may have been born before 1997, the year the United States and Canada banned certain feed considered the most likely source of infection. A cow gets infected by eating feed containing tissue from the spine or brain of an infected animal. In the past, farmers fed their animals such meal to fatten them. Mad cow disease, known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is a concern because humans who eat brain or spinal matter from an infected cow can develop variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. In Britain, 143 people died of it after an outbreak of mad cow in the 1980s. Officials say the Washington state cow was deboned at Midway Meats in Centralia, Wash., and sent Dec. 12 to two other plants, Willamette Valley Meat and Interstate Meat, both near Portland, Ore. Petersen has said that much of the meat is being held by those facilities. Willamette also received beef trimmings - parts used in meats such as hamburger, he said, adding that those trimmings were sold to some three dozen small Asian and Mexican facilities in Washington, Oregon, California and Nevada. In response, representatives from several supermarket chains in the West have voluntarily removed ground beef products from the affected distributors. Despite assurances that U.S. meat is safe, Japan, the top importer of American beef, and more than two dozen countries have blocked U.S. beef imports. Jordan joined the list on Sunday. U.S. beef industry officials estimated this week that they've lost 90 per cent of their export market. Ranchers export 10 per cent of the beef they produce. U.S. agriculture officials arrived Sunday in Japan to discuss maintaining beef trade even as the United States investigates how the Holstein in Washington state got mad cow disease. The Food and Drug Administration is trying to find out if the cow ate contaminated feed - a difficult task because the animal may have contracted the disease from feed it ate years before it appeared sick. The disease has an incubation period of four or five years. Dr. Stephen Sundlof, head of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, said that an animal could get sick if it eats a little bit of infected material, as little as half a gram. "Even if a small amount of brain or central nervous system (material) were to get into cattle feed, there is the potential for even that very small dose to result in the disease," Sundlof said. Officials are less certain about how much would infect a human, he said. "It's not known what dose would infect humans, but it would be higher for humans than for cattle." Investigators have considered other ways the disease could spread. Although scientists have never found a case of mad cow infection being passed from a mother cow to its calf, they want to test the sick cow's calves for the disease as a precaution. |
� The Canadian Press, 2003 |
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