It was an all-American moment–grinning 16-year-old Ryan Rash resting his head on his grand champion steer, Badger, after winning the blue ribbon at the National Western Stock Show.
The lumbering black steer fetched $37,500 at auction, and Ryan and his parents couldn’t have been more proud. But within days, the ribbon had been stripped, the money forfeited and Ryan banned for life from the Denver show.
The reason? Cheating.
Badger had been fed an illegal, steroid-like drug called clenbuterol that beefed him up, giving him the straight lines and muscular physique of a champion. Ryan’s parents, John and Cherie Carrabba of Crockett, Tex., admitted responsibility.
They are not alone on the junior livestock show circuit.
At shows across the country, the illegal growth promoter was detected last fall and spring in more than a dozen winning steers and lambs that had been paraded around arenas by America’s fresh- faced youngsters.
As state fairs open this year, U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials are rearming themselves with kits to detect the drug. In Europe, people who ate tainted meat from animals given the drug were hospitalized with increased heart rates and muscle weakness.
The drug is by no means the only method of cheating.
Over the years, exhibitors have been caught using cosmetic surgery to get rid of a steer’s extra neck flab, injecting air under the animal’s skin with a bicycle pump to give it smoother lines, and using twine, glue and wig hair to fill out an animal’s bony legs.
At the Tyler County Fair in Texas earlier this year, a boy whose pig was too light to qualify rammed a garden hose down its throat and turned it on. The swine gained 10 pounds, but died a few minutes later.
And at the Arkansas-Oklahoma State Fair last September, a 16- year-old held the head of his lamb while a friend severely beat it so its body would swell and feel firmer to judges.
The cheating has tainted a symbol of wholesome Americana at its best–kids learning responsibility by raising an animal, showing it, selling it for slaughter and using the profits for a college education.
Since some grand champions have sold for more than $200,000, officials are putting most of the blame on parents who will do anything to help their children win. Some hire professional groomers to scout out and raise the best show animals with little or no help from their kids.
Scott McEldowney, who admit ted feeding clenbuterol to his 10- year-old daughter’s steer, Barney, says he had to cheat to compete on a national level.
“It’s like anything in life, either racing cars or anything,” said McEldowney, who has a small farm in Ansonia, Ohio, near Dayton. “If you’re going to play on the same level, let’s play on the same level.”
He and seven others at the Ohio State Fair were caught either drugging their animals with clenbuterol or injecting oil under their skin to give them a better appearance. His daughter, Jessica, was banned for life from showing at the state fair and had to return the $4,000 paid for her steer.
“We’ve had people that tried to get us to use it for years and we refused. We wanted nothing to do with it,” McEldowney said.
“But we were getting beat by cattle that were on it, people that were trying to sell it to us,” he said. “I was trying to give her an equal advantage, not an unequal advantage.”
An Ohio Agriculture Department investigation led to the convictions of 10 people for either selling clenbuterol or tampering with livestock, and two Wisconsin veterinarians and one in Iowa have been indicted in the drug-distribution scheme.
At the Tulsa State Fair in Oklahoma, six of the top animals tested positive for the drug. And in Louisville, Ky., clenbuterol was found last fall in the grand champion lamb at the North American International Livestock Expo.
The drug is most often smuggled in through Canada, where it is legally used to treat horse respiratory problems, FDA official George (Bert) Mitchell said. No human health problems have been reported domestically, however; only small amounts of drug residue have been detected in the eyeballs of the show animals.
McEldowney estimates that 30% or more of exhibitors have used clenbuterol on their show animals. Barbara Wood, livestock director for the Tulsa State Fair that disqualified the six cheaters last year, estimates the number at 20%.
“At this time a year ago, I tried to deny we had a big problem, but I’ve changed my mind. It’s a serious problem,” said Eddie Smith, Oklahoma state supervisor of agricultural education and adviser to the Future Farmers of America. “I’m sure there’s always been a little fudging here and fudging there, but it’s definitely gotten a lot worse.
“If we don’t get it stopped, we feel it’s going to kill the youth show program,” he said. “It’s come to that.”
Livestock show officials are making rules as fast as people break them.
Some judges wear white gloves to detect if an animal’s hair has been dyed black to hide imperfections. At some shows, the animals’ hair has to be trimmed to one-quarter inch so judges can detect cosmetic surgery scars. Computer chips are inserted in the ears of some animals to prevent youngsters from swapping an inferior animal from early in the season for a better one at show time.
And, at the Houston Livestock Show, the owner of the grand champion can take home no more than $60,000–any extra prize money goes into a statewide scholarship fund.
The scandal is souring philanthropists, who for years have generously bid on champion animals to support what they hope will be the industry leaders of the future. Although a steer generally sells for about $1,000 on the open market, local meat packers, fast-food chains and others bid exorbitantly at the shows. Often, the meat is given to charities or auctioned off at benefits.
Irwin Fishman, owner of Lombardi Brothers Meat Packers, has purchased the grand champion at the National Western Stock Show for the last four years–including drugged-up Badger. Framed photographs of him posing with the past grand champions line his Denver office wall.
“I ought to take them all down,” said Fishman, who got his money back but still feels suckered. “I really thought these were young 4-H kids in high school that had raised this steer from a young animal, slept with them, made sure they had water.”
“Maybe I’m overly naive,” he said. “I still get choked up when I sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ and I still believe in Chevrolet and apple pie. Now, in this part of it, I don’t believe in it as much.”