Organic beef a new alternative

Though the first case of mad cow disease in the United States was found in Washington state, the effects of the discovery can be seen elsewhere, including Bloomington. Restaurants are working to reassure customers their food is safe, and some people say they have stopped eating beef until they feel it is safe again.\nStill, others say the scare has only reaffirmed their decision to eat only organic beef or abstain from beef entirely. Alan Moody of LaFarge, Wis. is the meat pool coordinator for Organic Valley, a company whose mission is to provide organic food to consumers at a low cost to the environment. Moody said he feels more comfortable eating organic beef for a number of reasons -- one of which is the fear over mad cow disease.\n"I have problems with our entire food system ... that's why I eat organic," Moody said. "Because I'm in the food business and I see what goes on out there, I feel that, yes, organic is the best way to go. I have reasonable confidence about what's in my food when I eat organic, where inorganic is definitely a top down system where the government is telling you what is healthy to eat."\nMoody is not alone in his decision to eat organic beef. Since the discovery of the sick Washington cow Dec. 23, Moody said his phone has been ringing almost constantly from concerned meat-eaters.\n"We've definitely seen an increase in sales since the Washington cow was discovered," Moody said. "Organic beef has a zero-tolerance policy, so we absolutely never feed our cows anything but a strictly herbivore diet and that includes while they're in mama."\nJohn Bobbe, the executive director of the Organic Farmers' Association, supplies organic feed to 18 states -- including Indiana. He said the feed many cows receive can be unhealthy, but also cites government tracking methods as part of the problem in stopping the spread of the disease.\n"One problem in fighting this is animal identification," Bobbe said. "Here we are, almost a month after the discovery of the cow in Washington State and because some groups have continuously fought against animal identification, we still haven't tracked all possible infected cows."\nPeople like Bobbe and Moody are not alone in their decision to eat only organic beef. Senior Kristy Brown said she started eating organic meat when she first heard about the mad cow disease outbreak in Europe last year.\n"I always just assumed the food I was eating was safe," Brown said. "But after seeing those cows on T.V., it scared me that I could be eating an animal that was sick like that. I eat much less beef now, in general, and the beef I do eat is organic now, just to be safe."\nIt seems Brown may be part of the minority in Bloomington, though. Mark Conlin, manager of Janko's Little Zagreb on Sixth Street, said the mad cow discovery in Washington state hasn't affected business at the restaurant at all.\n"There hasn't been a change in business in any way that I can see," Conlin said.