NEWS: Quarantine Lifted After Ranch Cleared of Mad Cow - Houston Ch

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Houston Chronicle July 11, 2005

 

Quarantine Lifted After Ranch Cleared of Mad Cow

 

Associated Press

 

LUBBOCK, Texas After negative tests on 67 of its animals, the ranch

that produced the first native case of mad cow disease had a quarantine

lifted today by Texas animal health officials.

 

The negative results for the brain-wasting disease came back on animals

tested from the herd because of their age proximity to the 12-year-old

diseased cow. Those destroyed for testing were born the year before, the

year of and the year after the infected animal's birth.

 

No recent offspring of the Brahma cross beef cow were destroyed for

testing, said Larry Cooper, spokesman for the U.S. Department of

Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

 

The lifting of the hold order, which went into effect June 10 when U.S.

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns announced he was sending samples to

England for further testing, will allow animals to come and go from the

ranch. The location of the ranch has not been disclosed.

 

USDA officials will now focus on checking market documents to trace

animals of the same age who may have left the ranch. The USDA has

reviewed some transaction documents, but there are no regulations for

how long markets are required to keep them, Cooper said.

 

"We're pretty confident that we can track a good number of them," Cooper

said.

 

The infected animal had a history of "erratic behavior" and had fallen a

couple of times, Cooper said. It was born before a 1997 ban on feeding

cattle protein or bone meal made from other cattle or other ruminants.

 

The cow did not enter the human food supply.

 

The animal did not fall when it was loaded to go to a slaughterhouse

Nov. 15, four days after being sold at market, and therefore was not

tagged as a downer animal. It was dead on arrival at the slaughterhouse

and taken later that day to a Champions Pet Food plant in Waco.

 

A downer animal is one too sick or weak to walk by itself. Downers have

a higher risk of the brain-wasting disease.

 

Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, eats holes in the

brains of cattle and is incurable. The disease is a public health

concern because humans can develop a brain-wasting illness, variant

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, from consuming contaminated beef products.

 

The negative tests on the 67 animals were not unexpected, Texas and

Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association spokesman Matt Brockman said.

 

"We've got a robust (surveillance) system here, and I think that's

underscored by these test results," he said.

 

Testing for mad cow disease in the United States has been limited to

"high risk" cattle, which includes downer cows; cattle exhibiting signs

of a central nervous system disorder or other signs that may be

associated with mad cow; and dead cattle.

 

Since June 2004, six months after a Canadian-born Holstein shipped to

Washington state became the first U.S. case of the disease, the USDA has

tested more than 400,000 cows. In 2003, the U.S. tested 20,543 animals.

 

Initial screening on the Texas cow indicated the presence of the

disease, but results from more sophisticated tests were negative, and

the department declared the animal to be free of mad cow disease.

 

The USDA's internal watchdog ordered another round of tests last month

that came back positive, and a laboratory in England confirmed the

results June 24.