A Hannaford Bros. official
says beef sales reached a record high last week.
LEWISTON – At Simones’ Hot Dog Stand, beef is still king.
Shaved steak. Hot dogs. Hamburgers. During a busy lunch hour, customers want them all.
And they don’t seem to be bothered by America’s first – and so far only – case of mad cow disease 3,000 miles away.
“We sold out. We had to run out and get more hamburger,” Jimmy Simones, owner of the Lewiston restaurant, said earlier this week. “People aren’t afraid. They aren’t even talking about it.”
Throughout the state, beef industry experts say the mad cow scare in Washington has had little, if any, impact on beef sales in Maine. And some say it may even help the state’s natural and organic beef farms.
Formally known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, mad cow disease is a fatal degenerative disease that affects the central nervous system. Cattle usually get it when they eat feed containing the brain, spinal cord tissue or other byproducts from infected cows.
Experts believe mad cow can cause a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, also a degenerative neurological disease, when they eat neural tissue from an infected animal. It can take years for symptoms to develop in both animals and humans.
Since experts discovered America’s first case of mad cow disease in a slaughtered Washington dairy cow on Dec. 23, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has set Washington cattle quarantines, meat recalls and new national beef processing policies. Federal and state officials have worked overtime to assure consumers that America’s meat supply is safe and that they cannot contract a disease by drinking milk or eating steak.
“It’s like I’ve told some people, it’s more dangerous to take a shower than to eat beef,” said Kenneth Andries, livestock specialist for the University of Maine’s Cooperative Extension.
Mainers seem to be listening.
Caren Epstein, spokeswoman for Hannaford Bros., said beef sales reached record levels last week and have been steady so far this week at the company’s 57 Maine supermarkets. The corporate office has received a half-dozen phone calls from consumers asking about mad cow disease and Hannaford’s meat. Individual stores have received another half-dozen.
“I think people would be more concerned if we couldn’t assure them,” said Epstein.
Hannaford buys its beef from Wolfe’s Neck Farms in Maine and Midwestern farms not connected to the Washington processors, she said. It’s a fact the grocery chain highlights now on its Web site.
Dave Hamilton, who owns six McDonald’s restaurants in the Lewiston-Auburn area, said he hasn’t seen sales dip since the Dec. 23 mad cow announcement. In fact, his hamburger sales continue to go up.
“Fortunately we have an educated public,” he said.
Erick Jensen, chief executive officer of Wolfe’s Neck Farms, said the mad cow situation hasn’t hurt sales at his natural beef farm in Freeport. In fact, he believes it may even eventually help the state’s natural and organic farms, which allow free grazing or supply only plant-based feed.
“We’ve been inundated with e-mails and phone calls,” said Jensen. “And a lot of them it’s ‘Where can I get your beef?'”
At the University of Maine’s Cooperative Extension, Andries said beef prices have dropped about 30 cents a pound, from $1 to 70 cents. But since beef prices rose to a record high over the summer, the drop still places beef prices at last year’s levels.
He believes, though, that Maine’s beef prices will drop further as national prices continue to fall. He said the beef futures market is expected to drop 20 to 30 percent in all.
But if Maine consumers continue to buy beef, Andries said, he thinks the state’s beef industry will come out all right.
“It’s just going to be an issue of weathering the storm,” he said.
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