050638 Meat Safeguards Tedious But Vital

Two days after a Waco, TX pet food company was lauded for helping catch the second case of mad cow disease in the U.S., food experts and packing plant owners voiced confidence in the federal system set up to safeguard the public.

They also held the Waco case up as an example of the diligence required nationwide.

A 12-year-old Texas-born beef cow that arrived dead at Waco-based Champion Pet Foods last November was confirmed Wednesday as only the second case of mad cow disease in the U.S. and the first involving a cow born in America.

Coming just before the Fourth of July weekend - a time of barbecues, hamburger cookouts and frequenting roadside eateries - the news left some restaurateurs and grocers wondering how the public would respond.

However, everyone from U.S. Department of Agriculture officials to Texas Gov. Rick Perry championed the Champion Pet Foods incident as proof that the sometimes tedious, time-consuming system works.

Benjy Bauer, owner of Champion Pet Foods, said the case shouldn't have surprised anyone, at least in regard to the dead cow's condition being caught through a meticulous system of checks before it could enter, in this case, the pet food chain.

"We go by the protocol of the USDA," he said Friday after weathering a barrage of phone calls from reporters nationwide. "It's just part of our every day chore. Our guy is USDA-trained. Our guy had to take the brain stem and all that."

Bauer, 48, whose family also runs Waco's H&B Packing and has been in the packing plant business since 1949, said anyone in the industry understands the need for increased scrutiny for everything from E. coli to salmonella.

"There are a lot of regulations, but that's just the industry," he said. "It's always been a highly regulated industry and always will be, and anyone in this industry accepts that."

Cindy Hobbs, owner of Nemecek Brothers in West, a 109-year-old business that slaughters its own cattle and that of others, said her business is equally eagle-eyed for trouble, including cattle that can't stand.

"We won't accept any 'downers,' won't even let them enter this plant," she said. "If an individual drives up with a trailer load of cattle, a state inspector with an office here examines them to see if they can stand up on their own. If there is any question, if it can't stand up, we tell the people, 'Sorry, you'll just have to carry it away.'

"If a cow is really having problems," she said, "we would call the state veterinarian and turn the matter over to him."

Hobbs said to comply with USDA "mad cow rules," her company removes the backbone and vertebral column of cattle more than 30 months old. These can't be processed for consumption because the USDA ruled last year the vertebral column and spinal cord can't be sold for consumption in older cows, more likely to suffer from mad cow disease.

The skull, brain and eyes also can't be processed.

Removing the vertebral column and backbone makes the production process a little more tedious and time-consuming, and it took employees a while to get the hang of it, she said. But the extra work is worth it to protect the food chain.

Hobbs said she believes the food chain is safe, and procedures followed by H&B and other packers help keep it that way.

But incidents like this week's "show us that we can't be complacent," she said. "Sometimes we have to be awakened."

Lelve Gayle, executive director of the Texas Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at Texas A&M, which examined the sample taken from the dead cow in Waco, said the laboratory has tested nearly 34,000 samples from cows between June 1, 2004, and June 1, 2005, from Texas, New Mexico, Arkansas and Louisiana.

The cow confirmed this week was the only one that came up "inconclusive," which in his opinion meant the sample was positive for mad cow, he said. But the USDA makes that determination, so the sample was then sent to the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa.

Initial tests there were negative, he said. Later, additional tests were taken, and they turned up positive. To settle the matter, the sample was sent to a veterinary laboratory in Weybridge, England, which confirmed the positive results.

Gayle said state or federal inspectors at slaughterhouses make a pre-death inspection of cattle. Inspectors decide if an animal is suitable to go into the food chain, looking especially for older cows, cows with a poor body condition, cows with symptoms of central nervous system disorders, and downers.

Older cows are under special scrutiny because they may have become infected by feed before a 1997 ban on feeding animal parts to cows. The only way the disease is known to spread through cattle is from the consumption of animal parts.

Donna Heitmiller, owner of Heitmiller Family steakhouse in Elm Mott, said the latest mad cow episode hasn't altered business any.

"So far it hasn't," she said Friday. "I gave all my employees information that I got from CNN and the other news sources about what's going on and, from what we know, there's no danger. But there'll always be some who wonder."

Mike Landsfeld, partner and plant manager at Waco Beef & Pork Processors, which gets its meat already boxed from companies such as Sam Kane Beef Processor of Corpus Christi, said the USDA appears vigilant.

"The government is taking big-time precautions," he said. "We must have letters from the companies we buy from, guaranteeing that the meat is free of e- coli and what the USDA calls high-risk materials. I'm really confident in the food chain."

Source: Waco Tribune-Herald

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