Hidden Hazards: Now is the Time to Rethink Gun Use in Cattle Handling
by Angie Stump Denton, Bovine Veterinarian
Millions of pounds of ground beef are thrown away each year because of foreign material contamination. This is not just about isolated incidents but a widespread practice that needs immediate attention.
With the smallest cattle herd size on record, the impact of every pound of beef and every head lost due to foreign material contamination is even more significant today than it has ever been.
Pat Mies, Vice President of food safety and quality assurance at Tyson Fresh Meats and Chair of the beef industry food safety council, shares alarming math regarding foreign material contamination.
There is an economic loss due to cattle contaminated with foreign materials. Mies explains regulatory rules that consider any foreign material, regardless of size, to be an adulterant and unfit for human consumption.
The issue is industry-wide and not just state or region specific. Processors from across the US have frequently reported challenges with foreign material in beef cattle. “It’s not a Texas issue or New Mexico issue or a South Dakota issue,” Mies says. “It’s an entire US issue.”
Trey Patterson, Padlock Ranch president and CEO, says “Food safety in our industry is non-negotiable; it’s now an expectation.”
Patterson says the 2022 National Beef Quality Audit revealed a significant problem: 100% of non-fed plants reported finding foreign objects in beef, with half experiencing customer complaints about items like shotgun pellets. And in the audit, 50% of fed plants are having the same issue.
Trent Schwartz, West Texas A&M University assistant professor, explains, “This is not a fed versus non-fed issue. This is all cattle being sold for meat consumption, and we believe highly that all of this is happening in the production phase, whether it be cattle gathering techniques or treating cattle.”
Mies acknowledges plants have access to resources and technology to catch foreign material but it is not 100% accurate. “We have metal detectors, defect eliminators, X-ray systems, and vision systems,” he admits. “We’re using artificial intelligence to train these systems to do a better job, to get rid of these foreign objects. And then we also have the human element — people watching product and pulling product that may have foreign objects in it. We have all these things in our plants, yet we still have problems. It’s not 100% foolproof. It’s not 100% fail-safe.”
Economic Impacts
Patrick Linnell, CattleFax analyst, provided an economic perspective regarding cull cows and the financial loss due to foreign material contamination. “Cull cows is one area in particular where there’s an especially strong connection between animal welfare and husbandry and value to the producer,” Linnell says. With cow inventory at its lowest since the 1950s, and as the beef and dairy industries try to stabilize and rebuild, Linnell says cull cow supplies will remain tight for the foreseeable future. Cull cows on average represent 20% of total marketing and management for an individual operation and the industry as a whole, he adds.
“The consumer wants all the beef through the system that we can provide them,” Linnell says. “That’s why making sure we don’t have to dispose of this high-value product because of foreign material contamination is important.”
The economic and reputational implications of foreign contamination are severe. With current beef prices, each contaminated animal represents a significant financial loss. Moreover, these incidents can damage domestic as well as international market confidence.
Linnell says that 50% of US beef consumption is in the form of ground beef. “If you do the simple math and look at what ground beef costs today in retail stores, it’s about $5 per pound on average across the US. That is a lot of money that we’re pulling out of the system because people decided to use a shotgun and bird shot to move stubborn cattle,” Mies says.
It Starts with the Live Animal
Schwartz is the lead researcher working on a checkoff-funded study in partnership with NCBA regarding foreign material detection techniques in live animals before the animal enters the processing facility.
He says a wide range of foreign objects have been found in live animals, with metal shot being the most common. He points out that most of the foreign material found relates back to metal objects coming from the live side, not something that’s added to the product post-harvest.
His team is cataloging pictures and materials received from plants and individuals for future use and educational purposes. The primary source of these foreign objects appears to be cattle handling practices. “Cattle get in rough country and won’t come out,” he says. “The first instinct is to use a shotgun or rat shot and move those cattle with some metal shot.”
Hunters are another concern for the shot residue. “We don’t feel like this is a hunting issue,” he says. “This is a direct contact, point-blank type issue. Criminal mischief has also been brought up. Criminal mischief or criminal acts is certainly a possibility.”
He also says unintended exposure or living conditions can lead to the foreign material, such as cattle ingesting wire protruding through the stomach, and into the skirt or other organs. Darts are also becoming an increasing concern, with some found deeply embedded in muscle tissue and even lungs.
“We need to start looking at the production side, and how we can limit some of these items that are making their way into the plant,” Schwartz summarizes.
His ongoing research project is focusing on developing methods to detect objects in live animals under the hide using ultrasound, X-ray, and metal detection techniques. “The goal of the research is to determine efficacy. Does it work?” Schwartz explains. This work will allow for technology advancements to potentially identify foreign material throughout the supply chain in the live animal.
How You Can Help
Patterson suggests a voluntary, industry-wide effort to address the problem before it reaches processing facilities. “I need your help,” Mies says in a plea to all beef producers. “I need you to talk to your friends, your family, your neighbors, anybody that you can about moving cattle with shotguns, and that it should never happen in our industry.”
Researchers Close in on Alpha-Gal Syndrome Meat Allergy Mystery Linked
by Jennifer Shike, Bovine Veterinarian
Is wild-habitat disruption to blame for the increasing US prevalence of Alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), a tick-borne allergy to animal meat? A University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill modeling study is helping close in on this mysterious meat allergy that is on the rise.
Ross Boyce, an assistant professor in the infectious diseases division at the UNC School of Medicine and assistant professor of epidemiology in the Gillings School of Global Public Health, is collecting information from a network of sources. He is using this data to strategically determine where and how to battle ticks and other insects that can change a person’s life for the worse with one bite, UNC reports.
Using a dataset of 462 AGS patients with confirmed AGS from UNC Health and models based on environmental factors, such as landcover and topography, the team assessed whether the risk of AGS is linked to habitat fragmentation often seen in open spaces and areas of low-density development in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.
What is AGS?
Bites from the lone star tick ( Amblyomma americanum ) or the blacklegged tick ( Ixodes scapularis , also called deer ticks) can trigger AGS. Alpha-gal is a sugar molecule found in most mammals. After eating mammalian meat, people who become allergic to alpha-gal may experience an hours-long delay in symptoms, which include hives, swelling of lips, face, tongue or throat, stomach pain, and nausea, UNC reports. It can also cause restricted breathing and death.
AGS has a particularly high incidence in the mid-Atlantic region. The number of suspected cases rose from 24 in 2009 to more than 34,000 in 2019. The only way to positively know a patient has the allergy is to test for antibodies that their bodies developed to fight the infection. Most people with AGS need to refrain from eating meat such as beef, pork, lamb, venison, and rabbit.
“Reports of AGS have grown rapidly since its first report in 2009 and are likely to continue to increase as awareness of AGS and incidence of tick-borne disease more broadly increases,” the authors explain. “These increases are likely to be exacerbated by shifts in land use, resulting in more human-tick interactions throughout the southeastern US.”
Although clinical and laboratory diagnostics for AGS are becoming more readily available, the epidemiology of AGS, and tick-borne disease in general, apart from Lyme disease, is not well described.
AGS Risk Factors
The models identified low population density and open-space development as risk factors for AGS. Two models predicted a strong east-to-west risk gradient across the mid-Atlantic region, which largely reflects the environmental transition from mountains to coastal plains, while a third model predicted a much more uneven distribution.
“Understanding environmental risk factors associated with AGS diagnosis is a critical first step for determining at-risk populations. Here we show evidence supporting the hypothesis that AGS is associated with landcovers often correlated with the presence of Am. americanum,” the authors say.
Although the distribution of alpha-gal cases throughout the US do not align exactly with the known distribution of lone star ticks, researchers say this suggests potential environmental confounders and/or ascertainment bias. However, estimating incidence and geographic case distribution is complicated by limited reporting, as AGS is not generally reportable at the federal level and there is low healthcare provider awareness of the condition.
“AGS incidence, like all TBD (tick-borne disease), is largely driven by human behaviors that increase human-tick interactions, e.g., land use change, as opposed to tick population dynamics,” the authors wrote. “Anthropogenic land use change, such as forest fragmentation and urbanization in particular, have been linked to increased TBD risk.”
This study suggests the need for personal protection measures for individuals residing in, or entering, these at-risk areas.
