MAD COW: Original Story Link: Dave Louthan's letter
Palaces For The People
ORIGINAL STORY PUBLISHED HERE:
http://www.columbiabasinherald.com/index.asp?Sec=letters&str=5307
ColumbiaBasinHerald.com Moses Lake's local news source. ... 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.
...
...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. ...
=============================
http://www.newsday.com/features/food/ny-hsscen273601320dec27,0,4329933.story?coll=ny-foodday-print
... On one thing, though, Ellestad said he disagreed with the
government. Federal officials have described the cow in question as a
"downer" animal, meaning that it was unable to walk, which raises
questions about whether it should have been slaughtered and put into
the food supply.
But Ellestad remembers seeing the animal. "It was not a downer cow,"
he said, trying to hold back his anger. "I saw it walking." Federal
officials have said the cow suffered from obturator nerve paralysis, a
common injury cows suffer while giving birth. It damages a big nerve
that runs through a cow's pelvis.
Ellestad said that his slaughterhouse has a policy of refusing to
slaughter cows that look too sick or injured. "There are some animals
that we will not accept," he said. "This cow looked relatively
healthy. I saw her up and walking." Symptoms of mad cow disease
include tremor and staggering.
Vern's Moses Lake Meats, though, does specialize in slaughtering older
dairy cows culled from dairy farms because they are injured or no
longer produce milk in sufficient quantity. ...
=============================
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/2323596
History of first U.S. mad cow case A look at the history of a Holstein
cow that tested positive as America's first case of mad cow disease.
-- Between 1997 and 1999: Born in Alberta, Canada.
-- August 2001: Enters United States in Eastport, Idaho, with 73 other
cows. Delivered to a Mattawa, Wash., finishing company that feeds
young cattle until maturation.
-- October 2001: Sold to Sunny Dene Ranch in Mabton, Wash.
-- Dec. 9: Slaughtered at Vern's Moses Lake Meats in Moses Lake, Wash.
Carcass sent to Midway Meats in Centralia, Wash., for deboning. Meat
cuts sent to two processing plants in the Portland, Ore., area --
Willamette Valley Meats and Interstate Meats -- which ground the beef
and sell some to retailers in Washington, Oregon, California and
Nevada.
-- Dec. 11: Testing samples from the cow arrive at U.S. Department of
Agriculture lab in Ames, Iowa.
-- Dec. 22: Preliminary test results are positive for bovine
spongiform encephalopathy, known as mad cow disease.
-- Dec. 24: USDA recalls all meat processed at Vern's Moses Lake Meats
Dec. 9.
-- Dec. 25: Scientists in England confirm finding of mad cow disease.
=============================
http://www.kxly.com/common/getStory.asp?id=33753
...The USDA says the country is broken up into eight regions, and the
one including Washington certainly has been testing for mad cow, but
testing records obtained by UPI from the USDA show federal officials
did not test any commercial cattle for mad cow disease through the
first seven months of 2003 in Washington state. The documents also
show, no animals were tested for the past two years at Vern's Moses
Lake Meats slaughter house, where the mad cow case was first detected.
In fact, no mad cow tests were conducted from 2001 to 2003 at any of
the six federally registered slaughterhouses in Washington.
Cattle producers are not happy with this news.
"We need to keep on the government and make sure these checks do go
into place, to protect the cattlemen as well as the consumer down the
chain," said Maureen Mai, a Bonners Ferry Cattle Rancher.
Verns slaughterhouse in Moses Lake specializes in older and downed
dairy cows-which are considered the cattle most at risk for developing
mad cow. =============================
http://www.agriculture.com/default.sph/AgNews.class?FNC=goDetail__ANewsindex_html___51188___1
...Chris Hurt, a Purdue Extension agricultural economist, said
preliminary estimates place the cost of testing at about 1% of the
value of beef animals, so economically speaking, testing cattle 30
months or older is feasible.
"At $50 per head for 6.3 million cattle this is $315 million, which is
less than 10% of the value of lost exports," Hurt said. Efficiencies
in mass testing could make the cost much lower, he said. ...
=============================
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0401160209jan16,1,7496112.story?coll=chi-news-hed
More mad cow tests weighed to calm Japan
... "Either we test more, or they change their eating habits," said
Chuck Levitt, senior livestock analyst for Alaron Trading, a
Chicago-based firm. "They can do without U.S. beef."...
... "Meat processing plant personnel do all the sampling," said Paul
Carney, a USDA inspector in California, in a written affidavit. "We
just trust the industry to pick out the most suspect cows from their
own herds, then we test those and tell the public there is no mad
cow."
USDA officials said that only slaughterhouses that specialize in
downer cows are allowed to select animals for testing....
... Results in 4 hours
For the U.S., wider testing would likely mean replacing the
sophisticated but time-consuming test it currently uses with simpler
test kits that can produce results in as little as four hours. These
devices, which cost anywhere from $15 to $50 per cow -- or as little
as a penny a hamburger -- are used to test all Japanese cows, and 1
out of every 4 slaughtered in Europe.
In contrast, just 20,000 of the 36 million cows slaughtered in the
U.S. each year are tested for mad cow, though USDA officials say they
will double the tests in the coming year. The current test used by the
U.S., which costs about $50 per cow, takes anywhere from two days to
two weeks to complete....
... It also poses some risk. Many European countries didn't learn the
extent of their mad cow problems until they began aggressive testing,
and finding more cases in the U.S. could hurt beef sales, at least in
the short term.
"If you have a certain rate of [mad cow] cases, the more you test, the
more you'll find," said Markus Mozer, co-chief executive officer of
Prionics, a Swiss company that supplies test kits to many European
countries.
If the U.S. adopted Europe's system of testing only older animals--30
months or older--that would cover about 6 million or 7 million of the
animals slaughtered each year, said Bo Reagan, a vice president at the
National Cattlemen's Beef Association....
... HOW THE U.S. AND JAPAN TEST NOW
Test description
U.S.: USDA scientists examine slices of brain or spinal cord tissue
from cows under a microscope to look for prions--abnormal proteins
that in large amounts can destroy the brain and central nervous
system. The scientists study the amount and location of prions to
confirm whether the animal has mad cow disease.
JAPAN: Japanese officials grind up small amounts of brain issue and
wash them in chemicals, which can detect the presence of prions. If
the test is positive, the cow carcass is isolated and subjected to a
test like the one used in the U.S.
Cost*
U.S.: About $50 per animal
JAPAN: $15-50 per animal
Duration
U.S.: About 5 days, depending on testing backlogs and other factors.
JAPAN: About 4 hours
Animals tested
U.S.: Fewer than 1 percent of all cows slaughtered. In 2003, this
equaled 20,526 cows out of 36 million animals.
JAPAN: All cows slaughtered for human consumption....
=============================
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001826710_maddowner31m.html
Farmers won't lose much on 'downed' cow slaughter ban
...A study by veterinarians at the University of California, Davis,
found that at least one in 10 downer cows had salmonella.
A USDA study published in August reported that downer cows are 3.3
times more likely than healthy cows to have the type of E. coli
infection that sickens 73,000 people and kills 60 people a year.
And USDA records obtained by a New York animal-rights group show that
downers with abscesses, gangrene, lymphoma and pneumonia were approved
for human consumption.
For the dairy industry, sick and injured cows are nearly worthless,
according to a survey by the California Department of Food and
Agriculture. Farmers received an average of $29 for each downer that
left farms in that state in 1995 and 1996.
Those 14,300 downer cows generated just $410,000 of the $3.7 billion
California dairy industry, according to the survey.
In Western Washington, there is no market for downer cows, said Larry
Stap, a Lynden dairy farmer in Whatcom County and president of the
700-member Washington State Dairy Federation.
Stap said he has two options when one of his cows becomes sick or
injured: Pay a rendering plant $75 to dispose of the animal, or have
it shipped to Vern's Moses Lake Meats, the only Washington
slaughterhouse willing to accept downers. Vern's slaughtered the
infected cow from Mabton.
The cost of trucking a cow to Moses Lake is prohibitive when balanced
against the $50 to $100 Vern's pays for a downer, Stap said.
"It's kinda sad," he said. "Downed cows are probably some of the most
heavily inspected cows that ever arrive at a slaughter. I'd say downed
cows are in some ways safer than a standing cow." ...
=============================
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/154398_madcow29.html
...Friedlander said that when he worked as a USDA veterinarian in a
large Pennsylvania plant, he felt "all kinds of pressure" to approve
animals for slaughter.
So many animals come through that there's no way to do a thorough
inspection, he said. On a typical day, he said, about 1,200 animals
would be awaiting his inspection at 5 a.m. Each day, he said, there
were about 25 to 30 "downer" cows -- animals that couldn't walk.
His inspection involved climbing up on a catwalk, looking through each
pen and scanning whether any animals were sick.
"They put these cows in like sardines," cramming about 40 cows into
pens meant for 30, he said. "What am I going to see, really?"
He said the animals are walked through alleys 15 feet wide, in one
direction and in the opposite direction, so that he can inspect both
sides. Instead of walking slowly and in a single line, he said the
cows are run through fast, six or seven abreast.
"Maybe you see the first and second, but the third, fifth or sixth,
forget it," Friedlander said. "Right from the beginning there are
loopholes in this whole thing."...
=============================