Cowed

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FREMONT, Neb. - Candy Nysingh still cuts and packs meat at Fremont Beef Co., but with jobs in America's meatpacking belt being lost to mad cow disease, she isn't sure for how long.

"It is scary," Miss Nysingh said. "It just happened so fast."

On Dec. 23, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, had been discovered in a single Holstein cow in Washington state. More than 30 countries banned U.S. beef products, including Japan and Mexico, and slaughter cattle prices dropped about 18 percent.

Meatpacking plants from Minnesota to Texas and from Iowa to Idaho have since cut jobs because some of the "secondary" meats they produce -- such as beef tongue and intestines -- primarily go to international markets.

Overall meat-industry job losses connected to mad cow disease have been relatively few, mainly because domestic demand for steak and hamburger has remained strong, said Ted Schroeder, an agricultural economist at Kansas State University. About 10 percent of U.S. beef is exported.

"The total number of cattle here, the number processed, those things are unchanged," Mr. Schroeder said.

But Excel Corp. of Wichita, Kan., laid off 700 workers at five plants in Texas, Kansas, Colorado and Nebraska because of the loss of export markets for secondary meats, spokesman Mark Klein said.

Swift & Co. cut 140 jobs in Colorado, Nebraska, Texas and Idaho for much the same reason, spokesman Jim Herlihy said.