Kathy Heise

Feeling flush, Don and Kathy Heise sprung for new steel fencing with gates and pens, some new cattle waterers and embryos fertilized by a very good bull.

"They were things on our wish list," said Kathy Heise, 44.
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"I'm sure that everyone who thought about having beef for dinner put it back," says Heise, whose Oak Center Shorthorns farm is located outside Lake City, southeast of Red Wing."It seems that whenever an aspect of agriculture does well, they find a story that hurts it."

Heise's voice comes alive as she discusses their tiny herd of 50 Shorthorns something of a throwback in an era of 4,000-head operations.

The red-and-white mottled cows are a "family passion," Heise says, a labor of love augmented by her embroidery business and her husband's job as a field trainer for the Nielsen Media Research, the TV ratings firm.Their eight children spend summers shampooing and blow-drying the animals, showing them in competitions.One of her daughters was crowned this year's Shorthorn Lassie Queen.

"When we have people over for steak dinners we don't put steak knives out because you can cut our beef with a dinner knife," Heise says with pride.

Heise and other producers insist the danger to U.S. meat is minimal, particularly since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1997 banned the practice of feeding cows food containing rendered animals.