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There have
been two particular cows (possibly more) that have, through no intentional
effort, become part of the history of the United States. Those two cows
probably didn’t have much in common. They were both of the genus and
species Bos Indicus. They were both dairy cows. Most importantly, they
both caused significant economic impacts. Also, both received a great deal
of media attention. In contrast, one was made famous (or infamous) by the
actual negative damage she caused. The other gained notoriety because of
the perceived damage she caused. The first cow is Mrs. O’Leary’s cow
that, according to legend, kicked over the lantern in the barn that
started the Chicago Fire of 1871. The second is the Washington State cow
that was the first cow to be confirmed as BSE positive in the United
States.
According
to legend, and it may be more speculation than fact, the Great Chicago
Fire was started by the O’Leary cow and her unfortunate interaction with
a lit lantern. Certainly, according to history, the fire did start in the
area of the O’Leary barn. Most accounts of the event do not vary too
widely in the details of the damage done by the fire. The fire burned over
3 and a half square miles in some of the more populated areas of the city.
There were over 100,000 people left homeless and 300 deaths as a result of
the fire. Whether the cow was responsible for the fire or not, she was
blamed for it…. and so the legend goes.
The second
cow moved into the United States from Canada in a group of 81 Holstein
cows that were part of a dispersal in Alberta, Canada. As a bred heifer,
she became part of a dairy herd in Washington State. While part of the
herd, she calved three times. The first calf was a stillbirth, the second
was a heifer and the third, a bull. Incidentally, paralysis from calving
difficulty was the reason the cow went to slaughter.
As a
"downer" cow, she fit the criteria of a target animal to be
tested for BSE. A target animal is a cow (or bull) over thirty months of
age that is showing nervous signs such as abnormal gait, stiffness,
incoordination, down, dying, or dead from an unknown cause. As a tested
target animal, her brain tissue became one of the samples on the way to
the USDA’s goal of 40,000 samples for fiscal year 2004. That number of
negative tests would have given a 95 percent confidence level that BSE
existed in the United States at a rate less than one in one million
However, when she tested positive, life changed drastically for the beef
industry, including the export market, the rendering industry and for
certain, the way beef is processed.
In early
2004, in response to the positive BSE cow, USDA’s Food Safety Inspection
Service took measures to make sure that Specified Risk Material (SRM) are
removed from all cattle over thirty months of age that are slaughtered.
SRM’s include the brain, spinal cord, retinas, and the entire small
intestine. These are the tissues where the prion that causes BSE could be
found. It is accepted that animals under thirty months of age do not get
the disease; therefore, the SRMs only become a concern after the animal
reaches 30 months. Also, downer cows were no longer allowed to be
slaughtered and enter the human food chain. And finally, if an animal is
tested, before the meat or by-products enter either the human food chain
or are rendered for animal food, the carcass is held until the test comes
back negative. These measures were in addition to measures put in place
during the latter part of the twentieth century, including banning the
import of cattle from countries known to have BSE and the banning of
ruminant by-products in cattle feed.
By June 1,
2004, USDA kicked off an intensive testing program that had a goal of
testing 268,000 target animals in one year. According to a Harvard
University study, that many negative tests would yield a 99 per cent
confidence level that BSE would show up if it existed at a level greater
than one in one million. At the one year mark, there had been well over
350,000 samples. That year of intensive testing proved the extremely low
incidence of the disease. Although the positive retest of a sample that
had been called negative in November 2004 was announced in late June, the
disease is getting more and more difficult to find. And we are looking
diligently. Someone recently commented that finding BSE has gone from
looking for a needle in a hay stack to looking for a needle in a hay
field.
The
producers from the State of Alabama have participated well in the BSE
Surveillance Program. At the one year point (June 1), over 1,300 samples
had been submitted from target cattle from Alabama farms. By mid-August,
the number of samples submitted from the state was 1,785. Nationally, the
number of samples has surpassed 430,000. We continue to look for a disease
that continues to make an exit.
So what
about the two cows? The O’Leary Cow will forever live in legend and the
history of Chicago. The BSE cow? We continue to deal with trade issues,
testing, and maintaining consumer confidence. The bottom line is that BSE
is an animal health issue and not a food safety issue. Since 1996 when a
casual link between BSE and new variant Cruetzfeldt-Jacobs Disease was
mentioned, less that 150 people worldwide have died from new variant CJD.
That is far short of the thousands of cases predicted to have been present
in humans by now.
As we
continue with the enhanced BSE Surveillance Program, we ask that anyone
who thinks he or she may have a target animal to call the USDA’s BSE hot
line at 1-866-536-7593 or call our office at 1-334-240-7253.
Dr. Terry
Slaten is the Associate State Veterinarian. |
