January 1, 2004 Alameda Times-Star (Alameda, CA) by Douglas Fischer

A simple enough purchase. Except this time she wanted more. She wanted to know from where the beef came, how it was raised.

Eastin wanted information.

The mad cow scare is reshap-ing the beef industry, forcing slaughterhouse reforms and casting a harsh spotlight on its more startling practices. Some consumers, meanwhile, are taking a second look at the hamburger patties and rib roasts sitting on their serving platters.

No beef from the Washington slaughterhouse where the nation's sole confirmed case of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, made it into Northern California's supermarkets or restaurants. Health and agriculture officials have repeatedly stated that America's meat supply is safe, notwithstanding the 30 nations banning U.S. beef.

But the scare has raised questions -- for some -- about beef available in California: Where did it come from? What was it fed? How was it raised?

Those questions, it turns out, aren't so easily answered.

"I'm not at liberty to disclose the names of our suppliers," said Stacia Leven-feld, spokeswoman for Albertsons, which operates 176 stores in Northern California. "I can assure you that none of our beef in Northern California was involved with issues in the Northwest."

Those paying a premium for brand-name beef from outfits such as the Central Valley's Harris Ranch or the Oakland-based Niman Ranch get better assurances. The ranches can track individual cattle from conception through slaughter to the supermarket's loading dock.

Generic cuts available at most supermarket meat counters can have a more diverse history -- passing from slaughterhouse to "fabrication plant" to distributor before hitting a store -- but must meet the same U.S. Department of Agriculture standards as their pricier counterparts.

Ground beef made into hamburger patties sold chiefly to fast food restaurants is another matter altogether, with old dairy cows being mixed with fat trimmings from beef cows before being ground up. Again, the same safety standards apply, but most experts agree the chance of a problem slipping past inspectors is far greater.

Scientists have determined cows older than 30 months are at the greatest risk for mad cow disease. Most beef cattle, on the other hand, are slaughtered at 14 to 16 months.

"The public doesn't realize the fast food and whole hamburger business is totally dependent on the old dairy cows," said Bill Niman, founder of Niman Ranch. "That's why the risk for ground beef is so great. You get the homogenization of thousands of animals every day."

Both Albertsons and Pleasanton-based Safeway declined to divulge their California meat suppliers. A spokeswoman for Irvine-based Taco Bell, which sells 366 million pounds of beef a year, likewise declined to name its California processing plants but said the company mixes its own ground beef and does not use cattle older than 30 months. Two of the state's larger packers -- Valley Meat Co. in Modesto and Beef Packers Inc. of Fresno -- did not return repeated phone calls Wednesday.

These days beef increasingly arrives in supermarkets prepackaged, said Holly Foster, spokeswoman for the California Beef Council. For instance, Cargill-owned Excel Meats, one of the largest processors in the country, might process a cow at one of seven plants it owns near slaughterhouses in the Midwest, ship the carcass to its steak-cutting plant in Marysville or a "case ready" plant in Missouri before it is packaged and shipped out.

The store butcher would never touch the raw meat. "It's just one less stage of handling the product," Foster said.

But how that cattle was raised -- how much time it spent on a feedlot, whether it was fed groundup chicken feathers or soybeans as a protein supplement, whether any calves were raised on cow blood as a substitute for mother's milk -- all remains unknown.

Likewise, the percentage of older bulls or dairy cows mixed into the ground beef is virtually impossible to determine, though the meat manager of one Safeway store in Oakland said such would be a rare occurrence.

"The lack of transparency kills me," said Niman. "That's all driven by consumers demanding cheap food and not asking first where it was raised, what it was fed, how it was bred."

Those wanting answers pay a price. Niman's natural beef commands a $2-to $3-per-pound premium over conventional beef, and the larger Harris Ranch brand isn't too far behind. Niman is really an alliance of 50 producers sending cattle primarily to a single feedlot in Idaho, where they are slaughtered and processed.

At Harris Ranch, 80 to 85 percent of the 250,000 cattle processed annually come from California ranches. They spend 120 days or more feeding on Midwestern corn, silo-aged grass, and a vegetable-based protein supplement at Harris' sole feedlot off Interstate 5 near Coalinga, then get slaughtered.

"Every one of those we can trace back," said Bruce Berven, Harris' marketing vice president. "We process no older animals."

Albertsons spokeswoman Levenfeld said the store will work "one-on-one" with customers to answer questions about its products.

What it comes down to, said the Beef Council's Foster, is a value judgment: "Do they value the process and source verification, or do they value the price?"

Cynthia Eastin, shopping for ground chuck at her Alameda butcher, had never really considered "process" before the mad cow scare. She shops at Scalize because she trusts the guys behind the meat counter. But the news in the past week has been enough to unnerve her, and Wednesday she wanted to know the beef's history.

Robert Davis of Piedmont, shopping at the Grand Avenue Safeway, pays process no mind. "You have a better chance of dying from slipping in the bathtub," he said.

Those watching the nation's food trends figure folks like Davis will remain in the majority, not matter what happens with this single case of mad cow disease. Bay Area shoppers may be more in tune with the origins of their food, but Niman and Harris ranches remain no more than niche players in the nation's beef industry.

"It's not clear to me how long consumers will keep an interest in an issue," said Jerry Gillespie, director of the Western Institute for Food Safety and Security at the University of California, Davis.

"There has to be pretty substantial consumer interest -- large numbers continuing to be quite concerned -- before much can happen."