010513 Texas Cattle Test Negative for Mad Cow Disease

Chicago - Test results on brain tissue from 17 Texas cattle that were imported from Germany in 1996 show that none of the animals had mad cow disease, the Texas Animal Health Commission said last week.

The cattle had been among the last survivors of several hundred head that arrived in the United States from Europe before the US government enacted an import ban on such animals in 1997.

The ban is intended to keep mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, out of the United States. BSE has never been detected in the US.

As with all cattle imported from Europe before the ban, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) had been monitoring the Texas herd for several years, department spokeswoman Hallie Pickhardt said.

“The cattle had been under quarantine since before 1997,” she said.

The Texas animals were euthanized at a Texas A&M University facility in early April, and tissue samples were tested at a USDA veterinary laboratory in Ames, Iowa, the Texas agency said in a statement on Friday. The remaining carcasses were incinerated and did not enter the food chain.

Pickhardt confirmed that the test results on all the cattle came back negative on April 18.

The USDA continues to track all European cattle that pre-date the import ban, and only 10 such animals are still alive in the United States, Pickhardt said. Four are in Vermont, three remain in Texas, two are in Minnesota and one is in Illinois, according to the department.

The rest died of natural causes or were purchased by the government and destroyed. The USDA is negotiating the purchase of the remaining cattle from their owners, Pickhardt said.

“We continue to keep watch over them, and an ongoing offer is on the table to purchase the cattle at any time the owners would like to do so,” she said.

US officials monitor these animals because they were in Europe at a time when BSE was thought to be spread through cattle feed containing byproducts from infected animals. However, none has shown any signs of mad cow disease.

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) provided extra money, in addition to the USDA offer, to purchase the Texas cattle, said Rick McCarty, a spokesman for the trade group.

He said the NCBA stepped in “so we can be assured the (BSE) agent was not in this country.”

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