Food Supply Still Safe

“My heroes have always been cowboys” was a great line in one of Garth Brooks’ greatest hits. Growing up in Brown County the only programs I ever watched on TV was western involving cowboys. The westerns always included cows, horses, six-shooters, bad guys and good guys with white hats. It was the cows though that I have had a connection with my whole life.

My first connection with farming involved cows. My best friend lived on a farm and they had Jersey Cattle that they milked by hand. I still remember to this day the names of two of those cows; Babe and Beauty.

Couple of years ago I wrote a column about farming being an inheritable disease. I got a lot of comments and chuckles about that piece, but I wasn’t kidding about farming being an addiction.

My whole life has revolved around agriculture. I got my addiction from by grandfather who raised Registered Hereford cattle in Kentucky. When I was old enough for 4-H he gave me a registered Hereford heifer, TB Miss Baca III. From then on I was “hooked” for life. My 4-H and FFA projects were cows. I went to college and majored in agriculture. I took courses that involved cows. When I graduated from college I took a job in the county that had the largest number of beef 4-H project in the state.

I bought a farm so my four kids could have cows. When the kids left, the cows remained. I had cows even when I was a renter. I rented a house and converted the garage to a barn to put a cow in. Then I built a house in a subdivision so I rented a barn and pasture a few miles away so I could take care of my cow addiction.

This brings me to today’s subject: Mad Cow. The number one story in U.S. Agriculture since December 23, 2003, is a disease called bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) otherwise known as Mad Cow. It has cost farmers and ranchers billions of dollars in less than one month.

It is unfortunate that this disease was “coined” the name, Mad Cow. I like many cattlemen, have met disease free mad cows much too often. My first encounter with a disease free mad cow was when I was ten at the Brown County Fair. I was minding my own business walking down the center of the beef barn when I heard someone yell “look out!” I turned around, only in the blink of an eye, to be run over by a Shorthorn cow. Maybe that is why I have never owned a Shorthorn.

My daughter, Diane, convinced me to become a Black Angus breeder in 1983. Trust me, I have found many disease free mad cows in that breed. Every year at round-up Dr. John Agle, Greg Kaffenbarger, my son, Barry, Steve Steritz and I took turns being injured by a disease free mad cow. We had one cow that was so mad she turned the chute completely upside down. She was really mad because it took us awhile to figure how to get her out.

Last Tuesday one of Clark County’s largest cattle feeders, Lou McDorman, was in telling me about the disease free mad cow that put him in the hospital. The nurses said they have never seen anyone beat up that bad before. Than animal was not a mad cow but one could safely say it was an “unhappy camper”.

Despite all of our bruised and broken bones, all cowboys will take a mad cow any day over one with the disease BSE commonly call Mad Cow disease. BSE is no laughing matter. USDA and all cattlemen treat this like it is the bubonic plague. We were fortunate to have had this disease occur elsewhere over a decade ago so we could prevent this is the U.S. which we have. The only infected cow found in the U.S. has been traced back to Canada. Our beef supply remains the safest in the world. Here are some facts about this disease:

There is no evidence that BSE spreads horizontally, i.e., by contact between unrelated adult cattle or contact between cattle and other species.
USDA maintains that the risk to human health from BSE is extremely low in the United States. It is standard practice with downer animals identified prior to slaughter for the animal’s brain, spinal cord, and other related products to be removed and sent to a rendering facility. These so-called “specified risk materials” present the greatest risk of carrying the BSE agent. The scientific community believes that there is no evidence to demonstrate that muscle cuts or whole muscle meats that come from animals infected with BSE are at risk of harboring the causative agent of the disease. Milk products are also considered to be safe.
The youngest animal reported with this disease was in Japan. That cow was almost four years old. The mass majority of our beef comes from animals under two years of age.
For more than a decade, the United States has had in place an aggressive surveillance, detection and response program for BSE. The United States has tested over 20,000 head of cattle for BSE in each of the past two years, 47 times the recommended international standard.
Since 1989, USDA has banned imports of live ruminants and most ruminant products from the United Kingdom and other countries having BSE.
The only way BSE spreads is through contaminated feed. In 1997, the FDA prohibited the use of most mammalian protein, the main pathway to spread the disease should it be in the United States, in the manufacture of animal feed intended for cattle and other ruminants.
An independent analysis by Harvard in 2001 and again in 2003 shows that the risk of BSE spreading in the United States is low and any possible spread would have been reversed by the controls we have already put in place.

We still have the safest food supply, including beef in the world. It is far more dangerous for you to be outside during a thunder storm or driving on our nation highways than to eat beef. It is far more dangerous to be in a lot with a bull than to eat him.

As for me, I love being addicted to cows. Think I’ll have a steak dinner and celebrate my addiction.

All educational programs conducted by Ohio State University Extension are available to clientele on a nondiscriminatory basis without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sexual orientation, national origin,gender, age, disability or Vietnam-era veteran status.
Keith L. Smith, Associate Vice President for Ag. Admin. and Director, OSU Extension
TDD No. 800-589-8292 (Ohio only) or 614-292-1868

Updated: January 2004

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