The cattle market has dried up because of fears of mad cow disease, but the beef and dairy industries expect a rebound.
By JANET ZINK and JAY CRIDLIN
Published December 30, 2003
[Times photo: Skip O'Rourke]
Richard Stith, Riverview farm barn foreman for Aprile Farms, unloads freshly mixed cattle feed into troughs. The feed that Aprile Farms mixes onsite and feeds to its cattle is organic and uses no animal byproducts. With some 2,000 cows on its farms, Aprile is Hillsborough County's largest dairy.
Source: University of Florida Bureau of Economic and Business Research [Times art]
Most Saturdays, Rod Hopp would expect about 150 cattle to be put up for sale at his Interstate Livestock Auction in Seffner.
This past weekend, he got five.
Public fear over a case of mad cow disease in Washington state, Hopp said, kept many local ranchers from bringing in their cattle. Even in Florida, the market for beef has turned ice cold. No one expected many buyers to show up.
"That just blew my mind, when I had that few," Hopp said.
Throughout west-central Florida, cattle ranchers are bracing for a financial hit. Even as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reassures consumers that "the risk to human health is extremely low," ranchers worry that public perception will prompt people to stop buying.
Cattle ranchers are particularly annoyed because they are coming off one of their best years ever, fueled partly by popular high-protein diets.
Florida ranks 11th in the nation in beef cattle and 15th in dairy cattle, according to the Florida Agricultural Statistical Service. The state's beef cattle ranches have an economic impact of nearly $4-billion each year, say industry officials.
"It's going to affect the market some. We just hope it doesn't get too disastrous," said Pasco County cattleman Bill Barthle, speaking by cell phone from Al-Bar Ranch near the San Antonio community, where he was atop a tractor distributing hay to his 400 cows.
At Al-Bar, like most beef cattle ranches in Florida, cows give birth to calves that after about 9 months are sent to farms in such states as Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas where they are fattened up and then slaughtered for dinner tables. Some of that beef may return to Florida, but it's unclear how much. None of the meat in Florida stores comes from the Pacific Northwest, grocers say.
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Barthle expects to sell about 300 head of cattle in September. He hopes by then "everything will be smoothed out and running like a top."
For now, though, prices are falling.
Already, Barthle has heard that the prices of mature cattle headed to slaughterhouses have fallen.
Dave Tomkow, owner of the Cattlemen's Livestock Market in Lakeland, said before auctions were shut down for the holidays, a good beef cow was fetching between 58 and 60 cents a pound. Tomkow said he wouldn't be surprised if prices hit between 30 and 35 cents a pound when auctions resume at his business Jan. 6.
Mad cow disease, the common name for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is a neurological disorder contracted by cattle when they eat feed that contains contaminated animal byproducts. The disease can be deadly to humans, who get it from eating neural tissue, such as brain and spinal cord, from BSE-infected cattle.
For the first time, BSE was found in a cow in the United States last week. The discovery in Washington state prompted some countries to ban imports of U.S. beef and spooked consumers, though agriculture officials say there's no need for alarm.
"The food supply as far as beef and milk goes is 100 percent safe," said Jim Handley, executive vice president of the Florida Cattlemen's Association. "They can move forward with absolute confidence in purchasing it and enjoying it and making it part of a healthy diet."
In 1997, he said, the USDA banned feed that contained animal byproducts such as ground brains and spinal cord tissue, the cow parts most likely to contain BSE.
Barthle said the animals at Al-Bar eat only grass, hay and protein supplements made of molasses, which means they're not susceptible to mad cow disease.
Furthermore, beef cattle usually are slaughtered when they are about 18 months old, and the disease doesn't manifest itself until an animal is at least 30 months old, Handley said. The discovery of the infected cow underscores the effectiveness of the USDA's surveillance system; Handley has faith the agency will continue to take all the proper steps.
Most of the precautions, though, are merely to ease public fears, not because there's any real danger of people getting sick, said Liz Compton, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Agriculture.
The disease can't get into milk or muscle meat, which are the cuts usually found on American dinner tables, she said. Pot roasts, T-bones and sirloin steaks are perfectly safe, Compton said.
Since American tastes do not generally include cow brains and intestines, experts say the danger is not as great as in other countries.
According to the CDC, as of Dec. 1, 153 mad cow-related deaths had been reported worldwide. The CDC reports that hundreds more people in the United States alone die each year from salmonella and E. coli infection.
So why the worry?
"It's just that when you say BSE or mad cow in America, everybody freaks out," Compton said.
And that gives the ranchers reason to worry.
"Public perception is everything," Compton said. "If you stop buying meat because you're not sure what the situation is, prices are going to be impacted.
"They have been enjoying some of the best prices in years and some of the reason is these high-protein diets. It only takes one bad situation to change that."
On the other hand, she said, the high prices mean the ranchers have room for a little slide.
Joe Aprile, whose family enterprise includes about 2,000 beef and dairy cattle on ranches in Hillsborough and Pasco counties, is concerned about the short-term impact, but is confident that the crisis will pass.
Sure, he said, people will back away from meat counters.
"Just like 9/11. People quit flying," he said. "They're flying again."
He is not afraid.
"The beef you eat is good beef. It's safe," he said. "I'm going to eat more."
Especially, he said, if it gets cheaper.
- Staff writers Will Van Sant, Jim Thorner and Jim Ross contributed to this report.
