Washington – Exhaustive tests have confirmed mad cow disease in an animal apparently born in the United States, officials said Friday.
It is the second case of the disease confirmed in this country, but Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns stressed there is no threat to public health.
The animal, a “downer” that could not walk, was not killed at a slaughterhouse but at a rendering plant for animals unfit for consumption, officials said. Johanns would not say where the case turned up, but he said there was no evidence the cow was imported.
“I am encouraged that our interlocking safeguards are working exactly as intended,” Johanns said at a news conference.
“This animal was blocked from entering the food supply because of the firewalls we have in place. Americans have every reason to continue to be confident in the safety of our beef.”
Johanns repeatedly emphasized that the cow was not part of the human food chain. But the news is sure to shake up the U.S. cattle market.
The beef industry accounts for $2.8 billion, or 57.5 percent, of Colorado’s total agricultural industry, said Fred Lombardi, executive director of the Colorado Beef Council.
“The industry, along with the federal government, has worked since 1989 with the idea that we could eliminate this disease and that if we ever did identify signs of it in this country, we would be able to keep it out of the food supply,” Lombardi said. “And that’s exactly what happened.”
The Agriculture Department said the news also should not affect efforts to lift bans on U.S. beef in Japan and Korea imposed after the first U.S. case in December 2003.
Officials in Japan, formerly the largest importer of U.S. beef, have said a positive test result would not deter them from resuming beef imports. Japan agreed last fall to reopen its market but has not actually lifted its ban.
Since June 2004, the Agriculture Department has conducted an “Enhanced Surveillance Program” that has tested more than 380,000 head of cattle most susceptible to contracting mad cow disease, said Terry Stokes, chief executive officer of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, headquartered in Centennial.
“And in that time, we have found this one case,” he said. “That shows you that the prevalence of this disease is extremely low.”
Stokes said the key to eradicating mad cow disease – medically known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE – is the industry’s “100 percent compliance” with a feed ban enacted in 1997 that prohibits cattle from being raised on food composed of animal parts.
“We know that the feed ban is the primary intervention that will help us to eventually eliminating this disease.”
An internationally recognized laboratory in Weybridge, England, confirmed the case Friday after U.S. tests produced conflicting results, Johanns said.
Initial screening had indicated the presence of the disease, but the animal was tested and cleared of having the brain-wasting illness.
New tests were ordered two weeks ago. Those results, from a test known as the Western blot, came back positive, leading officials to seek confirmation from the Weybridge lab.
BSE kills brain cells and leaves spongy holes behind. A form of the disease in humans is variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. It has been linked to the consumption of contaminated meat.
The disease has killed about 150 people worldwide, mostly in Britain.
The first case of mad cow disease in the United States was confirmed in 2003. It turned up in Washington state in a dairy cow imported from Canada.
The new case is in an animal at least 8 years old, the department said. Like the first case, it was born before the United States and Canada banned cattle parts in cattle feed, which is how the disease is believed to spread.
Denver Post staff writer Christine Tatum and Libby Quaid of the Associated Press contributed to this report.
