By Eric Fidler
The Associated Press and The Cincinnati Enquirer

News that a single cow had apparently been infected with the brain-wasting mad cow disease sent a shudder from Wall Street trading pits to Main Street burger joints Wednesday.

Beef futures trading effectively stopped on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange because no one was buying. Restaurant stocks dropped, and industry and government officials braced for the economic fallout as other countries suspended beef imports from the United States.

In other countries where mad cow has appeared, panicked consumers shunned beef and sent a financial shock for years throughout the food industry from farms and slaughterhouses to grocery stores.

Still, many people said the problem could be limited if consumers see it as an isolated incident. Don Rogers of Forsyth, Ill., said he wasn't worried.

"If you buy a good quality meat from a quality store, you don't have anything to worry about anyway," he said. Rogers was drinking a cup of coffee at a McDonald's, which is the largest purchaser of beef in the nation, before heading off to buy steaks for a Christmas Eve dinner.

Gerry Pruitt of Villa Hills said he's not worried a bit.

"I like my beef too much, and what are the odds of catching it?" Pruitt said.

Still, Liz Hamblin of Crescent Springs had mixed feelings about the roast beef she bought Wednesday. U.S. products are undoubtedly safe, she said, and her family wants a roast for Christmas. But ...

"I always try to get them not to eat it, ever since it (mad-cow disease) happened in the other countries. It has bothered me. It's scary.''

McDonald's Corp. was one of the companies that took an early hit from the news, with its stock dropping $1.32 to close at $23.96 in a short trading session Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange. Rival Wendy's was off $1.87, or 4.7 percent, to $37.79, while Outback Steakhouse Inc. fell 5 percent, or $2.23, to close at $42.40.

McDonald's said in a statement that the infected cow had no connection to its beef supply and that its food was safe.

"I think the primary issue for McDonald's is consumer perception," Carl Sibilski, a stock analyst with Morningstar, said. "From a scientific standpoint, it doesn't really look like anyone's going to get it."

He pointed out that McDonald's sells billions of dollars worth of non-beef items, from Egg McMuffins to Chicken McNuggets, and said the company has very stringent standards about its beef.

Spokesmen for Burger King and Wendy's, the nation's second- and third-largest fast-food chains, also said they had safeguards in place.

Denny Lynch, a spokesman for Dublin, Ohio-based Wendy's International, said the U.S. Department of Agriculture's safety standards are effective.

"Tuesday's incident proves the system works. We applaud what the government is doing," he said.

Despite the reassurances, there was no question that beef had a sudden image problem.

At the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, there was no interest in beef futures contracts, which fell the market limit of 1.5 cents, or 150 points.

"There's nobody willing to buy a contract," said Chuck Levitt of Alaron Trading Corp. "This is not going to stop until the contract has lost probably a thousand points."

With daily limits on how far prices can drop, Levitt thinks it will be next week before there is demand for beef futures contracts.

Officials at Kroger, the largest supermarket company in the nation, were not available for comment Wednesday about the outbreak. Cincinnati-based Kroger owns two chains, Fred Meyer and Quality Food Stores, that operate in Washington state.

Vince Rawe, who raises beef cattle with his brother, Greg, on a farm near California, Ky., said the discovery of the first mad cow disease case in the United States this week in Washington state is "proof that the system works.''

"In this country, we have the safest and best checkpoints of any nation in the world,'' said Rawe, a member of the Kentucky Cattlemen's Association.

"... When you are talking about one animal in all the millions that are raised and slaughtered in this country every year, that's a pretty good system.''

The beef cattle market has been booming this year, particularly in Kentucky, the 12th-leading cattle producing state in the nation and the leading producer east of the Mississippi.

The boom has led to higher consumer prices, but the mad cow disease incident might end up having the effect of driving down the prices paid at the grocery. With a number of countries now banning the import of American beef, the 10 percent of U.S. production that usually goes overseas will end up in American grocery stores instead, Rawe said.

Some Greater Cincinnati residents were comforted by their inside knowledge of U.S. food standards.

"I used to work for a company that was regulated by the Food and Drug Administration,'' said Mark W. Jeanmougin of Cincinnati. "I know what we had to do. I trust the USDA will ensure that my meat products are safe.''

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who has made beef safety an issue for years, also credited federal officials for their quick response, but said the nation needs even stricter regulations to keep its food safe.

"This is one of those moments when the government has to step in as quickly as possible and as credibly as possible to restore confidence," he said.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said parts of the animal, which was from a farm near Yakima, Wash., went to three processing plants in Washington, but she added that there was little danger to the food supply because muscle cuts of meat "have almost no risk."

Mad cow disease, known also as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, eats holes in the brains of cattle. A human illness, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, is related to mad cow disease, and doctors think that humans contract it from eating meat containing infected tissue.

The country's largest meat processors, including Tyson Foods Inc., rushed to distance themselves from the suspect cow in Washington state.

Agriculture and meat industry officials say potentially diseased parts of the animal - namely the brain and spinal tissue - are removed before they enter the human food supply.

Analyst Tobias Lefkovich of Smith Barney issued a report noting the ripple effect could extend beyond the stock of meat companies, restaurants and grocery chains, and hit shares in farm equipment companies and chemical companies that are large producers of fertilizer.

---

Enquirer reporters Howard Wilkinson, Karen Gutierrez and Randy Tucker contributed to this report.