Western US states react to Washington mad cow case

LOS ANGELES, Dec 23 (Reuters) - Agriculture officials from Western states on Tuesday expressed confidence that the discovery of a case of mad cow disease in Washington state was not the start of an outbreak, even as they hurried to check their records for recent cattle movements from the state.

Nevada officials said the state would block the entry of Washington dairy cattle and New Mexico put an emergency response team on alert. Otherwise, Western states were taking a wait-and-see approach, downplaying the risks from the potentially fatal disease to cattle and humans alike.

In California, the nation's most populous state, officials said no special precautions would be taken, even though other cases of infection might be linked to the dairy cow that tested positive for the disease near Yakima, Washington.

"We have had extremely strong programs in place for many years," California state veterinarian Richard Breitmeyer said. "The fact that we have found a case is very unfortunate but it does not change the fact that the food supply is safe."

But he added that another animal could have eaten the same feed that infected the cow in Washington: "It wouldn't surprise me if more than one animal got the disease from that source."

A confirmed case of mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), has never been found in the United States. The U.S. cattle industry has long feared an outbreak, which could result in billions of dollars of losses.

David Thane, the Nevada state veterinarian, said the state would pull up the records of all the dairy cattle that came from Washington in the last five years.

"We'll also continue along the lines of not allowing any dairy cattle in from Washington ... until we get a better idea of how widespread this is," he told Reuters.

CAUTIOUS RESPONSE

Many state agriculture officials said they would not be hasty to act since the disease was not contagious between animals and could not travel fast.

"We will not be considering imposing restrictions until we have a confirmed diagnosis," Lara Azar, press secretary to Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal, told Reuters.

"Being a dairy animal, it should be pretty easy to trace because they have records of what they are fed," said Jan Busboom, professor of meat science at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington.

Texas, Kansas and Nebraska, three of the largest beef-producing states, said they had seen no sign of the disease in their own herds, and they had been monitoring for years.

The National Agricultural Statistics Service reported 11 million cattle on feed for feedlots with capacity of 1,000 or more head in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Washington as of Dec. 1.

"We hope this one isolated case, or at least we hope it was isolated, will be the end of BSE in our country, and that is what we would expect," Kansas Livestock Commissioner George Teagarden said. "Canada had one case and they haven't had any since." (Additional reporting by Michael Kahn and Jim Christie in San Francisco and Jon Herskovitz in Dallas) (Editing by Michael Miller; Reuters Messaging: ben.berkowitz.reuters.com@reuters.net; +1 213-955- 6781; ben.berkowitz@reuters.com))