Third Herd of Cattle Quarantined in Washington

January 3, 2004; Page A12
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer

The Department of Agriculture has quarantined a third cattle herd in Washington state after locating another cow from the Canadian shipment believed to have contained the animal with the nation's first known case of mad cow disease.

W. Ron DeHaven, the USDA's deputy administrator and chief veterinary officer, told reporters yesterday that a dairy farm near Yakima was quarantined earlier this week when the cow was found. With the discovery of that animal, he said, the government now has located 11 of the 82 cows from the Alberta herd that was shipped into Washington in September 2001, and it has good leads on many of the others.

DeHaven said the agency is searching for the animals not because it fears they can spread the disease, but because tracing them may help authorities identify the source of potentially contaminated feed consumed by the cow when it was young. That feed could have been the source of the infection. Nonetheless, he said, the animals in all the quarantined herds may be slaughtered to ease public concerns about the safety of American beef.

DeHaven also said both the U.S. and Canadian governments were moving forward with testing the DNA of the infected Holstein -- as well as the semen from the bull believed to be its father -- to confirm whether it came from a herd in Alberta, as now suspected. He said the governments expect to have an answer next week, although even those findings may not be conclusive.

"While the DNA testing may enable us to make a definitive determination, it is just one piece of information, and there's always opportunity for error," he said.

As an example of the possible limitations of the DNA testing, DeHaven said that although the infected Holstein is believed to have been conceived through artificial insemination using semen from an identified bull, it is possible that a different bull was actually the father. To ensure that the cows are impregnated, he said, breeders routinely send in "cleanup bulls" to mate with cows that have previously been artificially inseminated.

After Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman's announcement earlier this week that "downer" cows too old or sick to walk will no longer be allowed into the food supply, the beef industry has been working with the agency to set up a system to ensure they are not slaughtered, DeHaven said.

In addition, he said, the government and industry have been working on new ways to make sure that many of the downer cows are tested for mad cow disease now that they will not be going to slaughterhouses.

One of the ideas being considered is to pay feedlot owners to bring in their downer cows for testing. "Providing some financial incentive for bringing those animals to those other locations is one of the many things that are being considered at this point," DeHaven said. "Whether those monies would be made available or not and, if so, at what level, are all the kinds of things that are being considered at this point."

None of the quarantined animals has been killed for testing, but that will likely be necessary soon, officials said yesterday. "I think it's safe to presume that, at some point, some or all of those animals will need to be sacrificed," DeHaven said.

Mad cow disease is believed to have an incubation period of three to five years. DeHaven said his agency is convinced that the infected cow from Washington was 6 to 61/2 years old -- about the same age as the cow found with mad cow disease in Canada earlier this year.

Agriculture Department officials have stressed that both cows were likely born before the United States and Canada banned the type of feed -- which includes parts of slaughtered animals -- through which mad cow disease is transmitted. They said the ban, imposed in 1997, should have stopped the spread of the disease since then.

But Stephen Sundlof, director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine of the Food and Drug Administration, acknowledged yesterday that the feed ban was not uniformly applied at first. He said that although the compliance rate now is almost 100 percent, it was about 75 percent in the first year of the ban.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49666-2004Jan2.html