Lawmakers want USDA to expand mad-cow testing

By Sandi Doughton
Seattle Times staff reporter

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With three witnesses now insisting the mad cow discovered in Washington was able to walk, a congressional committee yesterday said testing for the disease should be expanded beyond "downer" animals.

In a letter to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Ann Veneman, the House committee that oversees government agencies also recommended that the total number of animals tested be boosted substantially.

"If the information we have received is true, a key premise of the USDA (mad-cow) testing program is subverted," said the letter from both Republicans and Democrats on the House Committee on Government Reform.

The USDA targets its mad-cow testing program at animals too sick or injured to walk, because they are more likely to be infected with the brain-wasting disease than cattle that appear healthy. Last year, about 20,000 animals were tested, 80 percent of them downers.

When the infected cow was discovered shortly before Christmas, Veneman and other USDA officials said it was a downer, which indicated the testing program had worked.

But three people who handled the dairy cow at the Moses Lake slaughterhouse where it was killed say the animal was standing and walking.

"Now I do not wish to sensationalize this, but it is a fact," Thomas Ellestad said in a sworn affidavit provided to the committee. "This cow did walk on the trailer at the dairy and off the trailer at our establishment."

Co-manager of Vern's Moses Lake Meats, Ellestad said he hadn't spoken out publicly before because he had faith the USDA would act decisively to protect both the public health and the meat industry.

But Ellestad said he's disappointed in the agency's response and frustrated with what he sees as the scapegoating of his slaughterhouse.

"Our business ground to a halt, and our employees' work hours were cut drastically or entirely," he said. "The efforts ... to portray our plant as a 'downer' plant could be considered a smokescreen."
 
For the past year, Ellestad said, the slaughterhouse had a policy of refusing downer cattle, though it would slaughter animals unable to walk because they'd been injured in transit.

He said USDA officials knew that. But last fall, before the mad-cow case was discovered, Ellestad said, the agency asked him to collect samples from slaughtered cattle for mad-cow testing anyway, because other slaughterhouses in the region refused to do so.

Ellestad also said that shortly after the cow tested positive, the USDA ordered the slaughterhouse to stop collecting brain samples for mad-cow testing.

Dave Louthan, the former Vern's employee who killed the cow, told the state Legislature recently that the animal was on its feet. The House committee also received an affidavit from livestock hauler Randy Hull Jr., who said the cow had walked onto the trailer when he picked it up at a dairy in Mabton, Yakima County.

David Marin, a spokesman for the committee's Republican leadership, said trust in the USDA could be shaken if what officials told the public is wrong.

"If in fact it's true that the lone ... infected cow in the nation was not a downer, then we need to re-examine statements that were made to the public and we need to revisit the parameters of our surveillance program," he said.

Earlier this month, an international panel of experts convened by Veneman to evaluate the mad-cow response urged a more-aggressive testing program for the disease, also called bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The panel said all downer and dead animals should be tested, along with random samples of healthy animals — all of which the committee also endorsed.

Last week, a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel also called for more testing.

Testing now targets only about 10 percent of downer animals, but the USDA is revamping the program, said spokeswoman Ed Loyd. The goal is to test 40,000 animals this year, double last year's efforts.

In January, though, only 1,608 animals were tested nationwide, short of the more than 3,000 a month required to meet the goal. Downer cattle were banned from the human food chain shortly after the mad-cow case was discovered. As a result, downer cows no longer go to slaughterhouses, which is where the testing has occurred.

Loyd also said the USDA inspector general has launched an investigation into whether the Washington cow was a downer. The USDA veterinarian who inspected the cow before its slaughter said in his report that the cow, which had given birth recently, was not walking, but was alert.

The letter, signed by committee Chairman Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican, and ranking minority member Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, asked USDA to reply by March 2.

Sandi Doughton: 206-464-2491 or sdoughton@seattletimes.com

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