Wichita ? Kansas cattleman Tom Hull bought his wife a big-screen television for Christmas this year, and he planned to surprise her with the extravagant gift.

But on Christmas Eve — the day after the first suspected case of mad cow disease was found in the United States — Hull’s daughter took the set back to the store.

“I’m not sure if we can pay for it,” Hull said.

Like many others in Kansas — home to nearly two and a half times more cattle than people — Hull was counting on cashing in on the high beef prices of recent months, which have salvaged farm income from the hardships of years of drought. The 57-year-old cattle producer from Beloit planned to sell about 600 head on Jan. 6 and another 300 head two months later.

But now, it looks like what were record-high prices could drop dramatically. The day after officials announced a cow in Washington state had tested presumptively positive for mad cow, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, beef futures trading effectively stopped on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. No one was buying.

“It kind of took the joy out of Christmas,” Hull said. “That’s for sure.”

Few places in the country are likely to feel the economic devastation wrought by mad cow disease more acutely than Kansas.

l The state is the nation’s second largest cattle producer, after Texas, with 6.35 million cattle on ranches and feedlots as of Jan. 1. There are 34,000 Kansas farms that house livestock.

l The state’s massive meatpacking and meat processing industry employs 13,700 people across the state.

Cattle stand in a feedlot near Dodge City. The economic fallout from the discovery of mad cow disease could be tremendous in Kansas, where beef production is one of the state's biggest industries.

l Cattle feedlots dot the Kansas prairie. More than 23 percent of the cattle American consumers eat are fed in Kansas. On Dec. 1, more than 2.48 million head were on Kansas feedlots.

“It is a wreck. We just don’t know how big a wreck,” said Paul Hitch, owner of Hitch Feeders II, which operates feedlots in Kansas and Oklahoma.

Up to consumers

The size of wreck is likely to be determined by the attitude of U.S. consumers.

Neil Jahnke, president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Assn., told the Kansas Livestock Assn. at its convention earlier this month that during Canada’s recent mad cow scare, per capita beef consumption increased 60 percent. It’s a surge he attributed to patriotism and industry group promotion.

Since the United States exports just 10 percent of its cattle, opposed to the 50 to 60 percent exported from Canada, the industry can withstand the loss of its export markets if American consumers continue to eat beef, Hitch said. Beef consumption, already high after the rise in popularity of high-protein diets, could actually increase if retail prices tumble far enough, he said.

But the loss of export markets — the three largest, Mexico, Japan and South Korea, already have closed their borders to U.S. beef — still will be keenly felt in Kansas because the state is home to such a large concentration of meat processing plants. Last year, Kansas exported more than $1 billion of live animals, meat and other animal products to other countries.

“It is certainly going to be painful, and I imagine some people will go bankrupt out of it, but we can get through it without destroying the industry if the consumer will stay with us,” Hitch said.

No Kansas connection

Kansas Agriculture Secretary Adrian Polansky said Wednesday that there was no reason to believe there was any connection between the cattle industry in Kansas and Washington state. “Economically speaking … we will have to see how this situation matures,” Polansky said.

Steve Hunt, chief executive of U.S. Premium Beef, declined Wednesday to discuss his company’s operations in Liberal and Dodge City. But he said the industry was working hard to reassure consumers their beef was safe, although it was “too early to tell” if the message was getting through.

No buying, no selling

Hitch said for now, he planned to buy no additional feeder cattle. Meatpackers aren’t buying any either, he said.

Most livestock auctions are shut down for two weeks during the holiday season, and both livestock kills and trading days are limited during the period.

“If it were going to happen in the United States, we could not have it happen at a more opportune time. … It gives the industry that period of time to absorb and analyze the consequences,” said Emporia cattleman Vic Peak.

James Mintert, a livestock marketing specialist with Kansas State University Research and Extension, expected slaughter cattle to sell in the upper $80s per hundredweight, or price per 100 pounds, in the first quarter of 2004.

With the export ban in place, the price could fall to the mid-$70s per hundredweight, he said.

“Exports are much more important to Canada than to the U.S. … That made the price decline in Canada much more severe than is expected in the U.S.,” Mintert said.

Risk, opportunity

Some cattlemen have protected themselves with risk management tools, using the futures market and buying livestock risk protection insurance. But many others, including Peak, have not.

“It is going to be pretty brutal for the next few weeks or months,” Peak said.

Robinson cattleman Larry Oltjen said he wouldn’t be buying feeder cattle anytime soon, but already was looking ahead for a chance to recover.

“We wouldn’t make any purchases now until we have an idea of where this market is headed,” he said. “I think there will be some opportunities — there always are when you have a calamity like this.”