nytimes.com
December 27, 2003
FARMERS
Second Farm Is Quarantined, and Cattlemen Are Worried
By SARAH KERSHAW
ABTON, Wash., Dec. 26 — As a second farm came under quarantine here in central Washington's Yakima Valley, the widening federal inquiry into where a cow infected with mad cow disease had been over the course of its four and a half years of life had farmers growing increasingly anxious.
Their troubles began unexpectedly this week when the first case of mad cow disease in the United States was discovered in a single Holstein. Officials say the cow arrived at a dairy farm here, the Sunny Dene Ranch, in October 2001, and was then slaughtered at a facility in Moses Lake, about 70 miles northeast of Mabton.
After federal officials said on Friday that a second farm, a Sunnyside feedlot in an area filled with dairies about 10 miles north of here, had been put under quarantine, Yakima Valley farmers quickly closed ranks and appointed three spokesmen among them to handle the frenzy of calls from news organizations. The quarantine was imposed because a bull calf birthed by the infected cow is feeding there.
Neither federal nor state agriculture officials would identify the feedlot, and the dairymen's spokesmen were tight-lipped about the location.
Case VanderMeulen, who owns 1,700 dairy cattle on two ranches just north of Sunnyside and was one of the hastily appointed spokesmen, said on Friday: "Well, we're worried. Worried, but also confidant. The situation is being handled very well, I believe."
He said that the large majority of dairy farmers raised their cows on their own property, but that it was not unheard of for a farmer to put younger cows on a feedlot, like the quarantined feedlot, until the animals were full grown.
Jay Gordon, executive director of the Washington Dairy Federation, said he was doing what he could to calm area farmers and livestock producers. "We're very much at the mercy of the federal government," he said. "There are lots of rumors going around in the farm grapevine right now. I'm telling them, `Hang on, calm down, we gotta wait for U.S.D.A. to track this down."'
He added: "Producers are very concerned. Producers are just very worried that they knew somebody who knew somebody. It's just very stressful right now for the industry."
Mr. Gordon said he had been in close contact with Bill Wavrin, one of the owners of the quarantined Mabton farm, which has about 4,000 cows in two locations.
"He understands he's part of a process now that's bigger than him," Mr. Gordon said. "He's cooperating 100 percent. For the sake of all the livestock producers, he's got to find out where the animal came from."
Mr. Wavrin and his relatives have declined to comment.
Federal officials called their search for the infected Holstein's origins a web of possibilities that could lead elsewhere in Washington, to Canada or to other states.
There was heavy cattle trading between Canada and the United States, with large numbers of cows moving into or out of the Yakima Valley, Mr. Gordon said, before trading stopped because of Canada's own sick cow last spring.
Elsewhere in the region, supermarket chains and consumers were still grappling with the ripple effect of the mad cow diagnosis. The slaughterhouse, Vern's Moses Lake Meats, recalled more than 10,000 pounds of beef from 20 cows — the infected one and others killed on the same day, Dec. 9.
The slaughterhouse had sent all the meat that day to one customer, a deboning facility in Centralia, Wash., which then sent the meat on to to two other wholesalers, Interstate Meat Distributors in Clackamas, Ore., and Willamette Valley Meat in Portland, Ore. Federal officials said on Friday that they had been able to track the meat, made into ground beef and patties, that was sold by Interstate Meats, which had sent some to supermarkets.
The officials said they were still tracing the shipments from Willamette Valley.
Supermarket officials from major chains in the Northwest said they had stopped selling meat from the two Oregon meat wholesalers as a precaution.
Rob Boley, a spokesman for the Fred Meyer chain, one of the biggest in the region, said that most of the chain's beef products came from the Midwest but that the chain had stopped selling ground beef it had received from the Oregon wholesalers. Mr. Boley said had he received a letter on Friday from Interstate Meat saying that all the products in Fred Meyer stores were safe. "They tracked it all down," Mr. Boley said.
Safeway also stopped selling meat supplied by the two Oregon facilities, as did Albertson's, a major Northwest chain. "We're encouraging all our consumers who are concerned about the product they purchased to return it to the store for a full refund," said Judy McLaughlin, an Albertson's spokeswoman.
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