usda mad cow coverup exposed

this story is mis-titled. a more descriptive title should have the words "usda coverup" in it.

Second mad cow case confirmed

New tests show Texas animal had disease -- official tells public that meat supply is safe

Marc Kaufman, Washington Post

Saturday, June 25, 2005

Washington -- New tests have confirmed that a Texas animal that federal officials earlier declared to be free of mad cow disease actually did have the brain- wasting ailment, the U.S. Agriculture Department announced Friday.

The definitive testing, done in England over the past two weeks, showed that the ailing animal, first flagged as suspicious in November, was infected with mad cow disease. The animal was retested after the inspector general of the USDA requested the additional check because of continuing concerns about the sample that had been dismissed by the agency.

USDA Secretary Mike Johanns said officials were just now trying to learn more about the origins of the animal, but he said there was no indication it had been imported, like the only other animal that has tested positive for the disease in the United States. That would make the newly identified animal the first American-born animal found to have mad cow disease.

Johanns sought Friday to assure consumers that the American beef supply is safe and that any suspect beef would have been kept off supermarket shelves.

But he acknowledged a number of embarrassing mistakes and oversights by the agency. In addition to originally misdiagnosing the diseased sample, a tag describing the breed of the infected animal was apparently mislabeled, an error that has slowed the process of determining where the animal came from.

The Weybridge, England, lab, considered the world's best, made the diagnosis using two different tests -- including one the USDA had also used when it declared the animal disease-free. USDA officials had previously said that the diseased animal escaped their notice because they performed only an immunohistochemistry test, or IHC, and not a Western blot test. Friday, Johanns said the Weybridge lab found the sample to be positive for mad cow using both types of test.

From now on, Johanns said, the agency will use both the IHC and Western blot tests on all samples found to be suspicious on an initial, rapid screening test for the disease. Some 388,000 animals have been subjected to that test, and only three have been found to be suspicious, Johanns said.

Scientists believe that mad cow disease is spread through the feeding of infected animal parts to other cattle. The United States banned that kind of feed in 1997, and Johanns said Friday he believed the infected animal had been born before that time. In very rare cases, the disease has been passed to humans who eat the infected meat, with fatal results. There have been no known cases of the human variant of mad cow disease in the United States.

Friday's announcement drew immediate and sharp criticism of the administration's handling of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The beef industry lost billions of dollars in exports when the first mad cow case was found, and critics said the administration had sought to minimize additional threats to protect the industry from a second crisis. Over the past week, some industry representatives had questioned the inspector general's authority to order the additional tests that ultimately found the positive sample, and Johanns publicly agreed with some of their criticism.

"Now we know why USDA resisted having the suspect animal subjected to the most sophisticated BSE test," said Carol Tucker Foreman of the Consumer Federation of America. "They were afraid the truth would come out. The public and the industry know that this animal was infected with BSE only because the USDA office of inspector general insisted that the additional test be done."

"The administration's response to mad cow disease appears to be more public relations than public health," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles.

Industry groups had a different view. "The bottom line for consumers remains the same: Your beef is safe," the National Cattlemen's Beef Association said in a statement.

Johanns said the department had not yet learned where the animal was born and spent its nine years of life. Earlier, however, the department identified the diseased animal as one previously reported in mid-November, and USDA records show that animal came from Texas.

Bovine testing

The cow: It was most likely born in the United States, probably before the 1997 ban on feeding ruminant protein to ruminants, and raised for beef. It became too ill to walk, was killed and incinerated.

The strain: Dr. John Clifford, the Agriculture Department's chief veterinarian, said the animal's disease strain did not closely resemble the British-style strain found in the first mad cow, which was born in Canada and raised in Washington state. Instead, it was closer to a strain found in France.

The problems: USDA Secretary Mike Johanns described several errors in the testing process:

-- The brain samples were frozen, which makes some tests harder.

-- Parts from five carcasses were temporarily mixed up.

-- The diseased cow was originally misdiagnosed.

-- No written records were kept.

New York Times