NEWS: Mad Cow was 12 yr old Brahman cross-breeding cow from Waco -

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USA TODAY 6/29/05

 

USDA says sick cow was born in Texas

 

By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY

 

The USA's second case of mad cow disease was in a beef cow born, raised

and slaughtered in Texas, making it the nation's first home-grown

example of the brain-wasting disease, Department of Agriculture

officials said Wednesday.

 

The animal was a 12-year-old Brahman cross-breeding cow that had been

taken to a pet-food plant in Waco, Texas, in November. Brahman traits

are prized by cattle growers for making other breeds heartier.

 

It was a downer, meaning it couldn't walk on its own and was therefore

deemed unfit for human consumption, said John Clifford, USDA's chief

veterinarian, in an evening news conference.

 

The plant, which the Agriculture Department would not identify,takes

downer, dead, diseased or distressed animals that cannot be used for

human food according to federal regulations enacted after the nation's

first case of mad cow in December 2003.

 

That time, the disease was found in a Canadian-born dairy cow in

Washington state. Its discovery cost American cattlemen billions of

dollars when 50 countries closed their borders to U.S. beef.

 

Mad cow is transmitted when cattle eat feed that includes brain and

spinal tissue from infected animals.

 

Before 1997, that practice was legal in the USA. Because the Texas cow

was born well before the feed ban was in place, it was very likely

infected early in life from feed, said Bob Hillman, executive director

of the Texas Animal Health Commission.

 

Clifford said the "source herd" is under quarantine as the USDA

identifies "animals of interest," which include cattle born in the same

year and offspring of the infected animal.

 

Mad cow, known to scientists as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, can

spread to humans who eat infected brain and spinal cord. In people it is

called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and is invariably fatal. An

outbreak in the United Kingdom in the 1990s has killed at least 150.

 

As part of the Agriculture Department's 12-month-old mad cow

surveillance program, brain tissue from the Texas animal was subject to

a rapid-response test in November. When that test didn't rule out mad

cow disease, the tissue was sent to the USDA's main laboratory in Ames,

Iowa, where test results were negative.

 

This month the agency's Office of the Inspector General ordered that the

cow's brain tissue be given a test called the Western Blot because of

the "conflicting" results of the earlier tests.

 

The test, used for final confirmation in Canada, Europe and Japan, was

positive.

 

A final test was performed at a prestigious veterinary testing

laboratory in England and came back positive Friday.

 

The animal was incinerated and never entered the human or animal feed

supply, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns has said.