First auction day since positive testing sees low prices, small
crowds; producers encouraged to hold stock for later date
n By Matt king Staff Writer
Gilroy – It wasn’t exactly Black Tuesday, but the local cattle market stalled on the first auction day since the federal government announced that an American cow had tested positive for mad cow disease.
“It’s a little soft, but it’s OK,” Joe Vargas said Tuesday from the auction at the 101 Livestock Market in Aromas. “The heavyweights were bringing in a lot of money, but it’s not there now.”
Vargas and his wife, Kathy, raise Angus cross cattle on Gilroy’s Castro Valley Ranch. The couple had intended to ship several hundred head to the 101 Market over the weekend, but sent only one truckload after the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Friday that a native cow had tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, a brain-wasting affliction known more commonly as mad cow disease that is fatal to humans.
And when prices Tuesday were lower than they were a week ago, Vargas decided to truck most of his cows back to Gilroy, where he’ll fatten them up and try again in another month.
“It’s just bad timing,” Kathy Vargas. “If the market is weak, we’re not going to sell them because we don’t want to just give them away.”
Joe Vargas estimated that Tuesday’s auction drew only about half of the usual crowd. Jim Warren, one of market’s owners, said he has been encouraging cattle producers to hold their stock until they can take full measure of the market.
“Sometimes it just takes a minute for things to readjust and then it’s OK,” Warren said. “We told people we don’t know what the implications are going to be and if they want to wait a week or so we understand.”
Tuesday’s prices were down slightly from this time last year. Four-hundred pound cattle that brought as much as $1.35 a pound a year ago fetched about $1.25 Tuesday. Seven-hundred pounders were steady at about $1.07. But cattle in the 800-pound class brought less than a dollar, much less than what Vargas and other area ranchers got just last week.
Don Silacci, who raises cattle on his east Gilroy ranch sold his head earlier this month, before rumors about a possible positive test began swirling, and did much better than he did last year.
“I got a real good price for them,” Silacci said. “If I still had cattle I would wait a week and see what happens, but I don’t think there’s going to be a big fall in the consumption of beef.”
Mike Miller, president of the Santa Clara County Cattlemen’s Association, said that the summer barbecue season may be enough to see the market through the bad publicity. He said if the market holds steady through this week, it likely will rebound strongly.
“Things are generally good around the 4th of July so it might be enough to counteract [the mad cow reports] and float through,” Miller said. “It’s hard to say what people are going to do. People are liable to be ho hum about it right now. I’m thinking this may just blow over.”
Local ranchers said that the wet spring contributed to what’s been a very strong national beef market, helped in part by the lasting Atkins diet fad, which encourages red meat in favor of grains and sugars. They also stressed that neither of the two cows to test positive for mad cow disease in this country have reached the food supply.
“People are eating more meat than they have for a long time,” Silacci said. “One of our biggest boosts was the Atkins diet, and people are getting more confident that the food supply is safe.”
The USDA has not divulged where the cow, which was born before the country imposed a ban on the type of ground chicken and cow feed known to pass the disease, was found. A spokesman said Tuesday that the agency was still investigating where the cow was born. It took the USDA seven months and three separate tests to confirm the positive result.
The seven months of news reports that accompanied the process frustrated ranchers, but they also saw the testing as evidence of the great lengths federal officials go to ensure that a diseased cow will never reach the food supply.
“It’s frustrating because this was the same cow they’ve been fooling with for a year,” Silacci said. “They should just get it tested and get it done one way or another. But the important thing is that the food never made it to the market.”
