One year after mad cow scare, meat business good in Basin

COLUMBIA BASIN — Darrell Oldridge remembers getting a call at home during the holidays last year. A customer had taken a prime rib bought at Oldridge's meat packing plant to the east coast for Christmas.

Oldridge, the owner of Block 40 Meats on Road 10 NE outside of Moses Lake, said the caller was concerned because a Washington cow had tested positive for mad cow disease.

The nation's first case of mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy,

had been found in a Mabton dairy cow on Dec. 23, 2003. The lone infected cow was later traced to have come from Canada.

Oldridge said that he received many calls at home after that first case hit, but things calmed down after a few months. Oldridge said he blames the federal and state government for the situation, and said that fellow

meat plant Vern's Moses Lake Meats took a big hit because of the scare.

"It was just a bad rap all the way around," Oldridge said, "feds let everyone down all the way around."

Vern's Moses Lake Meats advertises as the only federally inspected meat plant in Grant County, and was the plant that slaughtered the infected animal. The owners of Vern's Moses Lake Meats did not return messages and calls to the Herald to comment on this story.

One year after the mad cow scare, Oldridge said that business is good. He added that a rise in beef prices can be attributed to restrictions on cattle between the United States and Canada.

"The only complaint I have is that meat prices are so high," Oldridge said.

Rex Chamberlain also attributed the rise in beef prices over the past year to cattle restrictions between Canada and the United States. Chamberlain is the owner of Chamberlain Dairy, a 300-cow dairy that sends

its milk to the Dairy Farmers of America. Chamberlain said that there was an initial impact on the marketplace following the mad cow scare last December, but he said the scare actually helped to enhance the price of

beef.

"Usually just the question of the unknown is the biggest concern," Chamberlain said.

He said that after that unknown, he wasn't as concerned about the safety of his food supply. Chamberlain said he felt the food supply was extremely safe.

"A lot of customers had a lot of questions at first," said Bob Parham of the scare, but he said many of the questions people had were answered in the days that followed.

Parham is the owner of Basin Meats on Stratford Road, and he said business has picked up in the last year. Parham's business specializes in custom meats and farm slaughtering and he said his prices are probably

15 to 20 percent higher, and his customers are even buying more.

"People are actually wanting to buy homegrown animals," Parham said.

Parham said customers get all their meat from one animal at his shop, and said that there is currently a movement for more pasture-raised animals that are not force-fed.

The most lasting impact for Oldridge came out of fees he was charged by his meat renderer, who hauls unusable scraps away from his plant, in the months after the mad cow scare. He said that he was beginning to be charged by the pound for the renderer to haul scraps away, and additionally was being charged for high gasoline prices as well. Oldridge said his meat rendering bill skyrocketed from about $45 to nearly $400 to

haul meat scraps away. That rendering bill has stopped including the price-per-pound of scraps in just the last few months, he said.

"It cost us a lot of money for last seven months," Oldridge said, adding that the higher cost impacted many meat sellers.