A couple of interesting articles about the man who slaughtered the mad cow in Washington state - the first is the story that appeared in the weekly NYT science section on Tuesday.
Man Who Killed the Mad Cow Has Questions of His Own
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: February 3, 2004
Shooting a cow turned Dave Louthan into a crusader.
On Dec. 9, at Vern's Moses Lake Meats in Moses Lake, Wash., Mr. Louthan killed the only mad cow found in the United States.
Two weeks later, he says, he was dismissed after four years as Vern's slaughterer when he talked to the television crews outside and told them he was sure the cow, ground into hamburger, had already been eaten. The plant's owners did not return calls seeking comment.
"I got a big mouth," he said in a telephone interview.
Since then, it has gotten bigger. Using borrowed computers — he has none of his own, only "a microwave and a TV that gets four channels" — he started writing to newspapers, and is to testify today before the Washington State Legislature.
Contrary to reports from the federal Department of Agriculture, he asserts that the cow he killed was not too sick to walk. And it was caught not by routine surveillance, he says, but by "a fluke": he killed it outdoors because he feared it would trample other cows lying prostrate in its trailer, and the plant's testing program called for sampling cows killed outside only.
"Mad cows aren't downers," he said. "They're up and they're crazy." The Agriculture Department disputes his account. Dr. Kenneth Petersen, a food safety official, faxed copies of the Dec. 9 inspector's report saying the cow was "sternal," or down on its chest.
Mr. Louthan said he believed the government changed the report on Dec. 23, during the panic at Vern's when a positive test was found. The "smoking gun," he said, is that it is the only one on the page marked "unable to get temp" while other cows' temperatures were recorded. It is easy, he said, to get a rectal temperature from a downed cow but hard from a jumpy one.
Dr. Petersen said that he had no indication the records were altered and that the veterinarian had told him the animal was lying so close to the trailer wall that a thermometer could not be used.
In his new role as bloody-handed industry critic, Mr. Louthan argues that too few cattle are tested for mad cow to say with certainty that beef is safe. "One mad cow is a scare, but two is an epidemic," he said. "They absolutely, positively don't want to find another."
Ed Curlett, a department spokesman, said about 83 a month were tested at Vern's from October to December. (The testing began only in October, when the government starting paying $10 a brain sample.)
The department has not changed last year's plans to test 40,000 cows nationwide this year, out of 30 million slaughtered. Janet Riley, a spokeswoman for the American Meat Institute, which represents slaughterhouses, called that "plenty sufficient from a statistical standpoint."
Mr. Louthan, who lives across the street from Vern's, said that the slaughtering was "still going like crazy" but that an inspector in the plant told him no more mad cow testing was being done.
Dr. Petersen said he did not know if Vern's was testing.
On Jan. 4, an angry Mr. Louthan started sending e-mail messages to all the inspectors on the department's Web site, asking, "Are you just going to sit there with your hands in your pockets?" and accusing Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman of lying when she said American beef was safe.
Since then, he said, green department cars have parked outside his house "trying to scare me."
He gave the name and number of one agent who he said had told him to get in the car and ordered him to stop sending e-mail. The agent refused to speak to a reporter, but a spokesman said Mr. Louthan had asked that they talk in the agent's car and the agent did not intimidate, harass or argue with him.
......
nytimes.com
And here is a letter to the editor of the local paper Louthan wrote after he was fired for talking to the press:
Is the beef safe? Who knows?
My name is Dave and I work at Vern's Moses Lake Meats. I did until the day the mad cow test results on the Sunny Dene cow came back positive for BSE. That was Wednesday, Dec. 24. On Friday, Dec. 26, the KXLY news crew was at the end of Vern's driveway, locked out by a cable gate. The USDA had told the world that the mad cow had been slaughtered here, but it was not in the food chain. A blatant lie. It was one of many.
I walked out the news crew at lunch time because I can't stand a government cover-up. They asked me "was the cow in the food chain?" I told them of course it was, it's meat. Where else would it be? They asked me if the cow was a downer. I told them no, it was just an old cow.
The USDA had us taking brain stem samples from downers and back door cripples only. Since we only had a few walkers on this trailer full of downers, we just killed her along with them. We took a brain sample from her head because the USDA gives up $10 per sample.
If we would have unloaded her in the pens, we would have never caught the BSE. How many other walkers have BSE? We will never know. The USDA only tested the downers and cripples and only at our plant. We had only been taking brain samples for about a month when we found this one.
When the USDA said no more downers would be slaughtered, they essentially said no more BSE testing would be done. Vern's and every other slaughterhouse kept right on killing and selling Holstein meat from the same area as the mad cow with no BSE testing whatsoever. This is true and easily verifiable.
And just so the folks in Moses Lake don't feel left out, the beef head, tongue, liver, kidneys and tail were sold right here in the Columbia Basin. It's way past time for everybody to stop thinking with their bank accounts and start trying to find a way to stop the spread of BSE.
The minute the USDA found the contaminated cow, they stopped the brain stem collection and testing. Why? Ka-ching! It's the money. Billions.
If you want to be sure you and your family are eating safe meat, demand testing on every beef slaughter. It's quick and easy. Don't eat another piece of meat until you see a sticker that says tested and cleared for BSE on the package. BSE is 100 percent fatal -- if you or your kids get it, you die a very painful death. It's a slow, wasting disease. It's terrible.
Right now, a lot of people are telling you how safe their beef is, but they don't know if it is or is not without testing. That's their checkbook talking. Tat rendering plant in Canada wasn't feeding 81 cows, it was feeding thousands of cows.
Every second that goes by, more untested beef goes on the dinner plate. If you eat mad cow, you are going to get sick and you are going to die. Stand up and demand safe meat.
Dave Louthan
Moses Lake
columbiabasinherald.com |
