LIHU’E — While the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s announced diagnosis of mad-cow disease in Washington state on Dec. 23 startled many in the country, ‘Oma’o resident Daryl Kaneshiro isn’t losing much sleep at night.
Kaneshiro, a range-fed cattle farmer and member of the Kaua’i County Council, believes island residents shouldn’t get caught up in the hysteria.
“The local beef that we are raising and selling here is safe,” he said last night at the Kauai Cattlemen’s Association meeting held at the Lihu’e Neighborhood Center.
Mad-cow disease and its relevance to the island was one of the major topics at the meeting, which also featured a short presentation from Beth Tokioka, the director of the county Office of Economic Development.
“Our cattle ranchers know how to raise cattle,” Tokioka said. “When something like this (mad-cow disease) comes up, we have to have the ability to understand and then deal with it.”
Several other cattle ranchers echoed Kaneshiro’s sentiments about the island’s beef supply, citing thorough testing, chemical-free food sources, and locally raised cattle as key factors in a safer product.
“We really feel that our supply is drug- and chemical-free,” said Willy Sanchez, the manager of a slaughterhouse in the Wailua Homesteads.
Mad-cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), is a progressive brain disorder of cattle.
It was first identified in 1985, and is believed to have been created after new manufacturing and production techniques in the 1970s and ’80s allowed a resilient strain of scrapie (neurological disease of sheep and goats) to enter the cattle feed. It then re-emerged into BSE.
While humans cannot contract mad-cow disease itself, they can be stricken with the deadly variant, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), a related neurological illness, after consuming the meat of infected cows.
Human sufferers of the vCJD usually experience psychiatric symptoms early in the illness, which most commonly take the form of depression and anxiety or less often, a schizophrenia-like psychosis.
Neurological problems like unsteadiness and involuntary movements usually follow and shortly before death, patients become completely immobile and mute.
Despite the horrors of the illness, Kaua’i ranchers assure island residents that the beef is safe.
“We have a lot more opportunities for local ranchers to provide local meat,” Sanchez said. “All we can say is that it is safe.”
Business Editor Barry Graham may be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 251) or mailto:bgraham@pulitzer.net.
