Word: cowed
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...beef today and will continue to eat beef." PRESIDENT BUSH, expressing confidence that mad-cow disease has not tainted U.S. beef...
...could this be the year of mad cow? The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) banned Canadian beef in May after mad-cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), turned up in a single calf there. Now it is America's turn. More than 30 countries have banned U.S. beef imports since BSE was detected in a slaughtered 6-year-old dairy cow in Washington State on Dec. 23. Though officials say the cow entered from Canada in 2001, the USDA last week instituted a series of measures to reassure consumers that American beef is safe, including...
Before the scare, the American cattle industry had been doing well. That was true at nearly every level in the complex chain that starts at the bottom rung with the cantankerous collection of cow-calf ranchers, who sell to feedlot operators, who in turn sell to giant corporate packers like Cargill Meat Sector. After several tough years, profits suddenly exploded this fall as the wholesale price of beef soared to a record high of $120 per 100 lbs.--a 50% increase in one year...
That lone dairy cow that fell ill now puts those gains at risk. Wholesale prices have already fallen 15% owing to fears that the decimated export market--about 10% of beef sales--will lead to a glut. But even as a third herd in Washington State was quarantined last week for possible mad-cow disease, beef emporiums like McDonald's and Morton's said sales were holding...
...prices do fall, cattlemen like Bill Murphy in Montana expect they can wait it out. The trick in this business, he notes, is timing. The 60-year-old rancher says a lot of cow-calf operators have played the market right so far. They sold this year's calf crop when prices were up and may find that the market for beef has recovered by the time they are ready to sell their herds again next fall. Out at Murphy's ranch, on the snowy prairie of southern Montana, his pregnant cows' offspring will not be ready for sale until...