News Update
Jan. 19, 2010

New Bayer Service on CattleNetwork Aims to Stop Cattle Theft

With the recent challenging economy, there has been a substantial increase in cattle theft, especially in rural areas. The presence of valuable animals often out of sight of their owners is an attractive target for thieves looking to score a quick buck. Bayer Animal Health recognized the scope of the problem and asked CattleNetwork to assist them in developing CattleWatch™.

“Many key states address cattle theft through law enforcement and cattle associations,” said Todd Firkins, livestock category manager for Bayer Animal Health. “One of the challenges with our system is the breakdown that can occur in national communication. That’s where CattleWatch comes into play. The idea came to fruition to assist cattlemen across the country in addressing this important issue.”

The program is designed to assist in the national notification and communication of cattle thefts and indictments. It also serves as a resource center to help cattlemen prevent theft.

A review of recent news reports shows how urgent the need is. Just in the past few weeks Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA) special rangers made multiple cattle arrests in Trinity County and helped indict a Haskell man on two felony charges. Felony charges were also filed in a case involving the theft of 48 cattle in Missouri. A Houston man and woman were indicted on eight counts of cattle theft and the Border Patrol in Arizona halted an attempt at cattle theft.

“As cattle become increasingly transportable, tracing interstate transportation of stolen cattle becomes more difficult. CattleWatch is an online tool designed to be a central repository to alert people from Texas to North Dakota to be on the lookout for stolen cattle,” Firkins said.

Speaking for CattleNetwork, Rob Cook said the system will be on line “24/7” and notices of thefts will include as much information as possible. “Because we know time is a critical factor here, we want to make it easy for people to quickly spot stolen cattle and notify the proper authorities immediately.”

“We’ll back up CattleWatch with posters and brochures that will be available to livestock auctions and other places where cattlemen gather,” Firkins said. “This is a project that we think will really help cattlemen put a stop to theft.”

For more information see www.cattlewatch.com.

— Release by Bayer Healthcare LLC and CattleNetwork.

Beef Industry Responses Published in New York Times

The New York Times published two letters to the editor from beef industry sources in its Sunday (1/17) edition. National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) Executive Director of Research Mandy Carr Johnson and National Meat Association Director of Communications Jeremy Russell authored letters expressing disappointment in recent Times stories questioning beef safety.

According to NCBA, getting a letter published in the newspaper is a significant accomplishment. Thousands of prospective letters are submitted to the Times each day. The paper’s Sunday circulation is 1.4 million.

Johnson opened her letter by describing her longtime involvement in beef safety research. She said she didn’t recognize the industry depicted in the Times articles. Johnson reminded readers there are sources in every beef industry sector who work daily to bring safe beef to dinner tables across the country. She said ranchers, feeders and dairymen have invested $28 million in beef safety research since 1993, with total annual expenditures on safety estimated at $350 million.

“I know the people of the beef industry, and I’m proud of the work we do every day to provide safe food,” Johnson indicated in her letter.

Russell’s letter pointed out data from the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) showed the percentage of raw ground beef testing positive for E. coli O157:H7 last year dropped from 0.47% to an even lower 0.3%. He said the company questioned in the Times series had an extremely low positive rate of 0.05%.

“Instead of encouraging efforts to improve beef safety, you demonize a company that had the courage to invest in innovative technology proved to be effective in reducing dangerous pathogens,” Russell wrote.

— Release by Kansas Livestock Association.

K-State Engineers Fine-Tune Computer Models to Predict, Prevent Spread of Foot-and-Mouth Disease; Depending on Situation, Vacciantion or Culling Best Prevention

Combining technology and animal health, a group of Kansas State University (K-State) researchers is developing a more effective way to predict the spread of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) and the impact of preventative measures.

The researchers are finding that if an FMD outbreak is not in the epidemic stage, preemptive vaccination is a minimally expensive way to halt the disease’s spread across a network of animals. But if there’s a high probability of infection, computer models show that culling strategies are better.

“We are trying to do predictive as well as preventative modeling using a network-based approach,” said Sohini Roy Chowdhury, a master’s student in electrical engineering. “First we track how the infection is spreading in space and time. Then we try to mitigate that with certain strategies. The novel contribution of this project is that we considered networks in countries like Turkey, Iran and Thailand that don’t have a highly built database.”

Roy Chowdhury is working with Caterina Scoglio, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and William Hsu, associate professor of computing and information sciences. They presented the work in December 2009 at the Second International Conference on Infectious Diseases Dynamics in Athens, Greece.

The researchers used mathematical equations to predict how FMD spreads over a network of infected herds. In the network, the nodes are places like stockyards and grazing lands where animals are held. They are connected in various ways, such as by animals’ grazing movements and by how people and vehicles move among the herds. Hsu said the researchers’ goal is to increase the accuracy of models that predict disease spread in these networks over space and time.

In the experiments, the researchers ran up to a week of predictive modeling on a real network and saw how well it matched data from the actual episode. Roy Chowdhury said they also used artificial intelligence-based modules to cross compare the model’s accuracy.

The researchers also tested such mitigation strategies as vaccination, culling and isolation to see how they affected the network. In real-world outbreaks of FMD, culling often is presumed to be the best strategy, but Scoglio said their research could shed more light on the effectiveness of this practice.

“It is the hope to properly contain a disease like foot-and-mouth disease that is so infectious while minimizing the economic losses,” Scoglio said.

Hsu said this study also could benefit relief workers sent to help contain FMD. The K-State network models improve upon existing ones, he said, because they consider such factors as wind, animal grazing and human movements between regions, as well as the number of meat markets in an area.

Scoglio’s research group has studied disease outbreaks using computer models of networks before, but this project is different in that it considers a specific disease, she said.

Hsu contributed his research in data mining, which seeks to scour news stories and other online public sources and extract information that could offer clues about disease outbreaks. For this project, Hsu’s system crawled and analyzed web articles from news agencies like the BBC and CNN, as well as such sources as disease control fact sheets from universities.

“Just as Google indexes sites based on authoritativeness and looks for hub sites, we also look to start our crawls of the web from sites like the World Health Organization (OIE) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” Hsu said.

At the conference in Athens, Roy Chowdhury also presented a poster on preliminary work the group has done on H1N1 infections. Using temporal models, they generated predictions on when infections would peak and the rate at which they would drop off after that peak. Roy Chowdhury used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The group plans to extend this analysis of the H1N1 epidemic using network-based models.

— Release by K-State Media Relations.

Nearly 400 Tons of U.S. Ground Beef Recalled

Some 390 tons of ground beef produced by a California meat packer, some of it nearly two years ago, is being recalled for fear of potentially deadly E. coli bacterium tainting, U.S. officials said on Monday. According to Reuters, the beef was produced by Huntington Meat Packing Inc. of Montebello, Calif., and shipped mainly to California outlets.

An initial problem in ground beef shipped by the plant from January 5 to January 15 was discovered during a regular safety check, the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) said. It said it had received no reports of illnesses associated with consumption of the recalled products.

During a follow-up review of the company’s records, government inspectors determined additional products produced and shipped in 2008 to be of concern because they may have been contaminated with E.coli, the service said in a notice on its web site.

This batch was produced from February 19, 2008, to May 15, 2008. It also had been shipped to distribution centers, restaurants and hotels within California, the notice said.

“While these products are normally used fresh, the establishment is taking this action out of concern that some product may still be frozen and in commerce,” it said.

E. coli is a potentially deadly bacterium that can cause kidney failure in the most serious cases.

The service said it routinely conducts checks to verify that recalling firms notify customers, including restaurants, of the recall and that steps are taken to make sure the product is no longer available to consumers.

— Release by USAgNet.

— Compiled by Mathew Elliott, assistant editor, Angus Productions Inc.