http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...st/a37014_2003
dec28


So, what beef should I buy for the freezer?
I am in boston..



INCLUDED ARTICLE BELOW...




Cow's Meat Reached Retailers in Eight States
Mon Dec 29, 8:49 AM ET Add Top Stories - washingtonpost.com to My Yahoo!


By Blaine Harden, Washington Post Staff Writer

SEATTLE, Dec. 28 -- Recalled meat from a Washington state dairy cow infected
with mad cow disease has been distributed in eight western states and the U.S.
territory of Guam, federal officials said Sunday


In the strongest indication so far that significant amounts of the meat have
been eaten, about 100 consumers have called U.S. Department of Agriculture
(news - web sites) hotlines to say they have consumed the recalled meat and are
worried about their health.


Most of the calls came from people living in Oregon and Washington state, said
Daniel Puzo, a USDA spokesman. Consumers in the region have also told at least
two major grocery chains that they have eaten recalled beef, most of it in the
form of hamburger.


"The calls started coming on the 24th of December, after the recall was
announced, and they are still coming in," Puzo said.


Consumers apparently have been able to figure out if they and their families ate
the recalled beef because grocery store recalls have been quite precise. They
have referred to specific grades of lean ground beef on sale in specific stores
for about nine days before Christmas.


Callers to the USDA hotlines have been assured that the recalled meat is safe to
eat, Puzo said, and that the federal recall resulted from an abundance of
caution, rather than any known health threat.


Worried consumers have also been told that there is no scientific evidence
showing that people can contract the human variant of mad cow disease when beef
has been slaughtered in a way that strips brain and spinal cord tissue away from
muscle. The USDA said the infected dairy cow was slaughtered in this way.


The geographical range of worried calls, however, seems likely to expand after
Sunday's announcement that the distribution of the recalled beef has moved well
beyond the four states previously mentioned by the USDA.


The meat also went to Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana and Guam in the western
Pacific, said Kenneth Petersen, a veterinarian with the USDA's Food Safety and
Inspection Service. Previously, officials had said most of the beef, having been
distributed by two meat plants in the Portland, Ore., area, was shipped
primarily to stores in Oregon and Washington, with smaller amounts to California
and Nevada.


The amount of recalled beef, however, has not expanded. The recall is confined
to about 10,000 pounds of meat, most of which was ground into hamburger at
Interstate Meat Distributors in Clackamas, Ore.


The meat comes from the one cow that tested positive for mad cow disease, as
well as from 19 other dairy cows that were slaughtered with the infected cow on
Dec. 9 at Vern's Moses Lake Meats in Moses Lake, Wash.


U.S. officials said Sunday they had made some progress in clarifying the origin
of the infected dairy cow, which an ear tag shows came from Alberta, Canada,
where another case of mad cow disease was discovered in May.


The dairy cow, a Holstein, was part of a herd of 74 dairy cows imported in
August 2001, officials have said. All those cows were eventually sold later that
year to the Sunny Dene Ranch, in Mabton, Wash. It was from that 4,000-cow dairy
farm, now under quarantine, that the infected cow and the 19 others were sent
for slaughter in Moses Lake.


When U.S. officials announced Saturday the probable Alberta origin of the
infected animal, there was a dispute between U.S. and Canadian officials about
the age of the animal identified by the ear tag. Canadian records showed it was
61/2 years old, while U.S. records suggested it was about two years younger.


The discrepancy led Brian Evans, chief veterinary officer with the Canadian Food
Inspection Agency, to say that there is "no definitive evidence" that the
infected cow came from Canada.


Some of that confusion has been sorted out, said W. Ron DeHaven, deputy
administrator and chief veterinary officer for the USDA.


Based on information provided by the farm manager at the Sunny Dene Ranch,
DeHaven said, it appears the infected animal was an older milk cow and its birth
date fits Canadian records.


DeHaven said definitive identification of the herd where the infected cow was
born will await the results of DNA testing, due this week. He said officials are
testing at least one Canadian cow born to the infected milk cow before it was
exported to the United States. They also are testing frozen semen from the
Canadian bull that sired the infected cow. In addition, two calves born to the
infected animal in Washington state have been quarantined and are being tested.

Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is caused by misshapen
proteins, which cannot be removed from meat by cooking or irradiation.

The animal disease is associated with a fatal brain-wasting syndrome in humans
called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (news - web sites). It gives the brain
a spongelike appearance, there is no cure, and 154 people have died from it,
mostly in Britain.