Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Concerns about U.S. beef safety worry producers of pork and poultry, who figure Americans' concerns about one food can easily translate to suspicions about others.
"This is not good for chicken," said Bill Roenigk, an official with the National Chicken Council. "Consumers should be and are concerned about their food supply. Anything that jeopardizes consumer confidence in the food supply is not good for us."
The largest importers of U.S. beef - Japan, Mexico and South Korea - have halted shipments, while others imposed temporary bans. But an even bigger issue for U.S. agriculture will be how deeply Americans' confidence is shaken in the safety of the overall meat supply.
"It's just anybody's guess," said Jon Caspers, president of the National Pork Producers Council and a hog farmer in Swaledale, Iowa. "Markets don't deal with these things very often."
The mad cow scare hit just as chicken and pork producers had seen prices improve in August and September, in tandem with higher beef prices attributed to the popularity of high-protein diets like the Atkins diet.
It was "sort of like the water in the harbor lifting all the boats," Roenigk said.
Now, concerns about food safety could have a negative effect for all producers, said Mike Ovesen, executive director of the Kentucky Pork Producers.
"It's not even going to help the apple industry," he said. "Although, I'm sure everything is contained and everything is going to be fine. I still think we've got the safest food supply in the world."
One industry did expect a boon - organic beef, which comes from animals fed only milk, grasses and grains from birth to slaughter.
Mad cow disease is believed to be spread through feed containing protein or bone meal from infected cows or sheep. Although the government banned feeding cattle such products in 1997, organic food advocates say the law has loopholes and is poorly enforced.
"We will now see a huge increase in the demand" for organic beef, which accounts for no more than 1 percent of U.S. beef sales, said Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association.
Organic beef is more expensive; organic ground beef is priced six to eight times higher than what supermarkets charge for regular ground beef.
The Center for Consumer Freedom, a coalition that includes mainstream restaurants and food producers, says "radical social activists" are using the mad cow news to create panic.
"These activists are clearly hoping to drive U.S. shoppers away from the grocery meat counter and toward more expensive organic and so-called "natural' options," said David Martosko, director of research for the group.