Alberta Farm Family Rues Mad Cow Twists of Fate
Date: 09-Jan-04
Country: USA
Author: Scott Pattison
They found out this week a cow they raised on their dairy farm was the animal that tested positive for mad cow disease in Washington state last month, leading to huge losses for farmers on both sides of the border.
They sold their herd in 2001, after Wayne contracted meningitis, an often-fatal disease affecting the brain and spinal cord.
He survived, but lost four limbs, making dairy farming impossible. Legs in braces, supported by canes, his right hand replaced by a steel hook, Wayne said he wonders why his family has had to endure so much.
"But they say the Lord gives to those as much as he feels they can handle," Shirley, 63, said at a hotel near Edmonton, not far from where she and Wayne milked cows for 36 years.
Accustomed to hardship but not the glare of publicity, the couple held a news conference to try to sate media curiosity about the birthplace of the mad cow, and they pleaded for reporters to leave their family alone.
"We probably tended to be more the backbencher-type than the forefront people in everything that was done," said Wayne, 65, as he faced a phalanx of microphones and flashing cameras.
'OUR COWS ALWAYS CAME FIRST'
Wayne and Shirley quit good federal government jobs in 1965 to start a farm like the ones on which they had grown up.
"One day, we just decided to pack up and go farming," Wayne said. "The first year I thought I was crazy -- the next five years I knew I was."
But it was a way of life they enjoyed. "We lived with our cows," Shirley said. "You ask anyone and they'll tell you, our cows always came first."
They raised four children on the property at Calmar, Alberta, two of whom still work the land.
The Forsbergs built up a herd of 111 animals on the farm, where empty cattle pens now sit next to a weathered red barn.
When they first heard radio reports about a Holstein cow testing positive for mad cow disease in Washington, they thought about their herd, which they knew a broker had sold across the border.
Officials called them on Dec. 26, and tapped into detailed records they had kept, crediting the Forsbergs with speeding the search for the animal.
But the couple said they had hoped results of genetic tests released Tuesday would somehow show the animal was not theirs.
"Basically, I think we're optimists and we were hoping it wasn't our cow, but we were proved wrong and we had to accept that," Wayne said.
Canadian and U.S. officials are searching for the rest of the Forsbergs' former herd to see if any others are infected.
Canada's beef has been banned from most export markets since May, when it found its first home-grown case of the disease in an Alberta beef cow.
Both diseased cows were born before a 1997 ban on feeding protein made from rendered cattle and other ruminant livestock back to cattle, which scientists believe spreads the disease.
The Forsbergs would not talk about where they bought their feed. "As far as we're concerned, we fed legal feed in an approved manner," Wayne said.
While confident they did nothing wrong, they said they are concerned about the legacy their cow has left.
"We do have feelings for our fellow farmers, and this is not a good thing for the farmers of United States or Canada," Shirley said.
(With reporting by Dan Riedlhuber in Calmar, Alberta)