ld the nation of the first U.S. case of mad cow disease, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman emphasized one fact: the infected animal was already a high-risk suspect.

“The animal tested was a downer cow, or nonambulatory at the time of slaughter,” Veneman said, adding that it “was identified as part of USDA’s targeted surveillance program.”

But the cattle hand who actually killed the cow in question disputes Veneman’s assessment. David Louthan says the aging Holstein was a “a perfectly good walking cow,” not a downer. That the cow was even tested for bovine spongiform encephalopathy was “just a fluke,” he says.

Whether the cow could stand on its own is significant because the USDA based its mad cow surveillance program on testing only downers. In response to the discovery in December of the infected cow in Washington state, the department announced new beef safety rules to specifically ban downed cattle from human consumption. Louthan's assertion brings into question whether the policy of testing only downed animals adequately safeguarded the food supply.

The ailing cow was slaughtered Dec. 9 at Vern’s Moses Lake Meats, in Moses Lake, Wash., two weeks before Veneman announced the apparent positive test. On that day, Louthan operated the bolt gun that causes cows’ brain death in one swift stroke. He killed all the cows delivered that day.

“A nonmedical professional is voicing a position and you want USDA to defend itself to prove that what this random citizen is saying is untrue,” said spokesman Steven Cohen of the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, which manages the federal inspection program. “The determination by a veterinarian is the determination that is valid, and veterinarians are doing this every single day at slaughter plants across America. They’re making these diagnoses. They’re trained to.”

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The USDA declined a request to interview the veterinarian that examined the infected cow. Instead it provided MSNBC with a copy of the Dec. 9 inspection report on that load of cattle, which showed the cow as “sternal,” or lying on its stomach, but alert. USDA spokesman Daniel Puzo said the agency based its conclusions about the cow's downer status on the report and on its forensic investigation.

Yet others share Louthan’s belief. Vern’s manager Tom Ellestad was quoted in several newspapers saying the cow in question was able to walk off the trailer. He did not respond to inquiries from MSNBC. A third worker at Vern’s that day told the Oregonian newspaper last month the cow was “more than capable of walking off.” The Government Accountability Project, which represents whistleblowers, investigated Louthan’s claims and found enough evidence to conclude “that cow was a walker.”

Trailer full of downers

A self-described “cow killer” who speaks with a bold twang, Louthan has spent the past weeks tangling with the USDA and vocally questioning the official portrayal of mad cow risks as mostly limited to downers, which account for perhaps 200,000 of the 35 million cattle slaughtered each year in the United States. After growing up with cows on his grandmother’s spread in Texas, driving cattle trucks since 1980 and working at Vern’s for over four years, a job he says he loved, Louthan is hardly squeamish about the stark realities of cattle processing.

The cow in question arrived later in the day, Louthan said in an interview with MSNBC; it was the third cow off the second trailer they were processing and perhaps the 15th he had seen that Tuesday. (USDA officials dispute whether it is the same cow.) Of the previous two in that trailer, one was a downer and the other “wasn’t too good at walking,” he said.

The next cow, though, was standing, alert and in good shape compared to the remaining animals, which were all downers, Louthan recalled. Trying to move the cow to the loading ramp, the driver that brought the animals poked it with a cattle prod. Louthan, the only other one wrangling the cattle, was impatient and wanted to finish the day’s work.

Q & A Mad cow disease

• What is mad cow disease?

• What are TSE's?

• What causes it?

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, belongs to a family of diseases called Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies or TSE’s.

Encephalopathies are diseases of the brain. Spongiform comes from the fact that the brain takes on the structure of a sponge and transmissible means the disease can be spread.

TSEs are diseases of the central nervous system and slowly cause its failure. All have long incubation periods lasting from months to years. There is no cure and they are always fatal.

TSEs occur somewhat randomly, and the cause is unidentified.

TSEs are familial or inherited, which means they are passed on genetically from parents to offspring.

The source of TSEs are from outside the animal.

“She’s getting kind of squirrelly. I see her eyes starting to roll around. She’s looking for someplace to go,” he said. “So I asked the vet, ‘Have you seen her, doc?’ And he says, ‘I guess I seen her,’ something to that effect. I had the knocking gun in my hand already. I stepped up and I blasted that cow. She fell right there on the back of that trailer.”

While able-footed cows were herded up the slaughter chute at Vern’s, Louthan said, downers were shot in the trailer with a bolt gun and then hoisted into killing pens. Since last October, in accord with a federal testing plan, the central Washington facility pulled brain samples from all downed cows to submit for testing. Cattle that could walk received visual inspection after slaughter, which cannot detect the microscopic proteins that cause mad cow disease, and were not tested.

If the cow had walked up the slaughter chute, it would not have been tested for BSE. Because it was shot in the trailer, Louthan removed a brain sample for testing.

“If I’d took the time to run her around to the pens, we’d have never known that cow had mad cow, she’d have gone right in,” Louthan said.

By contrast, USDA officials maintain the cow, which was imported from an Alberta, Canada ranch in 2001, had been ill since it was injured during the birth of a calf during its time at the Sunny Dene Ranch, in Mabton, Wash., about 60 miles from Moses Lake.

“That’s why it was sent to slaughter,” said Cohen. “That’s where the injury occurred, and the post-slaughter inspection verified that.”

Previous injury

The copy of the inspection report indicates the cow in question, number M-2229095, had internal bleeding in its pelvic canal and an enlarged uterus, signs of internal damage during calf birth. Officials have said a previous exam at Sunny Dene, owned by veterinarian Bill Wavrin, uncovered the cow’s injuries, which caused it to have trouble walking. It is not clear if the injuries were severe enough make the cow a downer.

The report also shows the infected cow was the only animal in the trailer not to get a rectal temperature reading from the veterinarian, an omission Louthan calls a “smoking gun” and one the USDA dismisses.

Temperatures help assess a downer cow’s health: too high and it may have an infection and fever, too low and it may be moribund. The report shows another animal in the same batch that day appeared “unresponsive” and was condemned; its temperature was 94 degrees F. A healthy cow would register just over 100 degrees F.

Cohen noted temperature readings are “not a requirement,” and said the cow was positioned up against a wall, making it hard for the veterinarian to reach its posterior. Temperatures were taken on the others because “they probably showed other signs” of illness, he said, but the infected cow didn’t get a reading because “it looked to him that the animal was alert.”

However, former USDA veterinarian Lester Friedlander, who trained other vets and inspected thousands of downers, said temperature readings are a standard practice for downed cows. “That’s automatic,” Friedlander said.

Louthan said the cow, after he shot it, fell where it had been standing: halfway between the trailer walls, its head hanging off the end. He said he “never, ever” saw a downer taken for processing without a temperature reading, even if it had to be pulled away from a wall with a chain.

“There ain’t no reason in the world why you can’t stick a thermometer into a downed cow’s butt,” Louthan said.

At the time he killed the cow, Louthan said, the USDA veterinarian and a temporary inspector were standing by the trailer door.

FACT FILE Battling mad cow disease

Steps planned by U.S. officials to help protect the food supply from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)

• 'Downer' cattle

• Test and hold

• Advanced meat recovery (AMR)

• Cattle tracking system

• Specified risk material (SRMs)

• Air stun guns

• Bans on feed

All cows considered non-ambulatory -- those that cannot walk by themselves -- when they reach a slaughter facility will be banned from human consumption. Even so, the USDA will continue to test them for BSE.

The meat of any animal selected for BSE testing by USDA inspectors will be held until the test results return as negative. (It can currently be sent into the food supply.)

Any animal condemned by inspectors for signs of 'systemic disease' during pre-slaughter inspections is barred from use for food.

In this process, machinery is used to remove muscle tissue from cow skeletons.

The USDA has called for more testing of AMR products, since some outlawed brain and spinal tissue has been found in this meat during testing. The agency will also ban AMR techniques on skulls and spinal columns of cows older than 30 months.

The USDA says it will speed up development of a system already being planned to identify and track all head of cattle in the United States. Groups inside and outside the beef industry have long called for a national tracking system.

Parts of some cattle known to be at high risk of transferring the proteins that cause mad cow disease will be banned from human food.

SRMs will include include brains, eyes, skulls, spinal cords and some other neural tissue of cows older than 30 months. Small intestines of all cattle will be banned.

The USDA also wants better procedures to ensure all these parts are separated from human supply.

Air-injection stunning devices will be banned. These guns use high pressure to ram an air blast, often through a bolt, into a cow's brain, killing it instantly. They make the slaughter process more humane, but can force bits of brain tissue into the rest of the animal, potentially tainting its meat.

The industry has been phasing out these devices and the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service was already working on a rule to prohibit them.

The FDA prohibits feeding mammal protein to ruminant animals, such as cows, sheep and goats. In January, the agency expanded that ban to include cattle blood. However, the feed can be given to other livestock; those animals' protein can be fed back to cattle.

The January changes also prohibit the use of rendered table scraps or "poultry litter" -- chickens' feathers, bedding and feces -- in cattle feed. The new regulations also require many rendering plants to separate production lines for cattle feed from those used to make feed for other livestock.

Difficult to define

Amid the disagreement, what emerges is the difficulty in defining a downer. Under the USDA’s current rules barring downed cattle, which have not yet been formalized as regulations, farmers are barred from sending nonambulatory animals to slaughter. But cows can be injured during transport, or may be lying down, appearing to be downers even if they are later able to walk. As such, Cohen said, the determination remains with the veterinarian, though the slaughterhouse may alert the on-site USDA officials if a cow’s status appears to change. “But that wasn’t the case with this animal,” he said.

The USDA’s new mad cow surveillance program is still under development. Downers are prohibited from the human food supply, but may be checked at rendering plants. (Protein from downed cattle can still be used in feed given to some other animals.) Federal officials plan to test about 40,000 cows this year for BSE under the new system, which could also eventually include some testing on farms, according to spokesman Jim Rogers of the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

Louthan, who continues to live across the street from Vern’s, said he was laid off Jan. 5, a day after he sent about 200 e-mails to inspectors and other USDA employees. “Are you just going to sit there with your hands in your pockets while Ann Veneman lies through her teeth to the world?” he asked. He demanded all cattle for human consumption get BSE testing.

COMPLETE COVERAGE

• Facing the fallout in health and business

Shortly after, he claims, USDA agents began sitting in their cars outside his house -- including one armed agent who asked Louthan to get in his car for a conversation. Hesitant at first, Louthan relented. “He asks me, ‘What do you want?’” Louthan recalled.

The USDA inspector general’s office confirmed the conversation with Louthan, but asserted it was Louthan who asked to speak in the car rather than his house. Otherwise, officials would not characterize the conversation, saying it was “an ongoing matter.”

However, said spokesman Austin Chadwick, “There was no attempt to intimidate, harass or argue with him.”

As for his desire to test all cattle, U.S. authorities insist it would be overkill and an international panel that reported to Veneman this week instead recommended random testing of all cattle over 30 months old. The panel also said it was probable more U.S. cases of BSE would be found.

The panel was convened as U.S. officials struggle to convince more than 30 countries to lift beef bans placed after Dec. 23. Japan, the first of those to enact a ban, has a universal testing policy.

'Bloody, sloppy, splattery mess'

Since his dismissal, Louthan has been ever more vocal in his disgust with the USDA, juggling dozens of e-mails and calls. He testified this week before Washington state lawmakers. Despite his apparent gadfly role, he remains proud of his slaughtering skills. “You put everybody in that plant together, I can outrun all of them,” he said.

Louthan also worries about his time spent in the slaughterhouse with the infected cow, and the potential for cross-contamination.

“Killing cows is a bloody, sloppy, splattery mess. It gets on you. It gets in you. It gets in your eyes, it gets in your mouth. Everybody that ever killed cows has definitely had a mouthful of dead cow they had to spit out,” he said. “It’s still fun but I can’t go in there and get that poisoned cow on me anymore.”

INTERACTIVE

Current research indicates BSE infection requires the infected tissue to be eaten, according to Richard Race, a senior investigator at the National Institutes of Health Rocky Mountain Laboratories, though a slaughter tool, like a saw, could spread the infectious tissue onto otherwise healthy meat.

“Could it transfer some of that material? Sure, but in order to infect somebody, that material would probably have to be consumed,” Race said.

To limit the spread of high-risk tissue, the USDA has finalized a ban on air-injecting stun guns, which blast compressed air through a bolt into a cow’s brain, turning it to mush. But Louthan worries stun guns can still force bits of brain, considered a specified risk material (SRM) for its ability to transmit mad cow disease, into the carcass.

The USDA panel also recommended this week that “slaughter and carcass dressing procedures … be brought into line with international standards.”

Louthan continues to worry about contamination, especially due to another of his jobs at Vern’s -– operating the 400-pound band saw to create six- or eight-foot incisions down a cow’s spine and split it in half. Those saws come in close contact with the spinal cord and other nervous system tissue considered to be SRMs. “Nobody washes a saw unless they hit a bad beef or a condemned beef,” he said. “That saw’s not going to get washed until the end of the day. So that saw is contaminated.”

MSNBC's Joe Myxter contributed to this report.

Mad cow's 'downer' status disputed

Panel says 'high probability' of more U.S. casesMSNBC staff and news service reports

Updated: 8:46 p.m. ET Feb. 04, 2004

The lone U.S. cow with mad cow disease was not a "downer," as federal authorities assert, according to a slaughterhouse worker who says he killed the stricken animal. The claim comes as an international panel told federal officials Wednesday that more U.S. cases of mad cow disease are likely.

David Louthan, a former employee at Vern’s Moses Lake Meat Co. in Moses Lake, Wash., described his experiences with downer cows to Washington state legislators Tuesday.

In recent newspaper interviews, Louthan described a profoundly different scenario about the death of the ailing cow than that given by the government.

According to Louthan, the Holstein diagnosed with mad cow disease was frenzied and acting wild, which prompted him to shoot a bolt into its head. Prior to that, Louthan said, "she was a walker."

Louthan said the cow could walk on its own and wouldn’t have been tested had he not killed it outside the slaughterhouse. Under plant policy, cows killed outside of the facility are automatically tested. The testing, Louthan said, was merely “a fluke.”

He said he shot the animal because he feared it would trample downed cows that were in the same trailer.

The infected cow was slaughtered Dec. 9 in Moses Lake, about 70 miles northeast of Mabton, Wash., where it had lived on a dairy farm. Louthan claims he was laid off from the company two weeks after killing the cow, after he told television crews that the cow had already been eaten.

Plant manager Tom Ellestad also confirmed in newspaper interviews that the cow in question could walk when it arrived at Vern's. Ellestad did not immediately respond to inquiries from MSNBC.

A third employee of the slaughter house told The Oregonian newspaper that the cow was walking when it arrived.

The Government Accountability Project, which assists whistleblowers, said it investigated and verified Louthan's story. "We talked to him, we checked his story out," said Jack Pannell, the project's communications director, "and were able to say with pretty solid evidence that that cow was a walker."

This portrayal clashes sharply with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's description of the ailing cow. One day after the Dec. 23 announcement that the cow had tested positive for mad cow disease, USDA officials said the animal was a so-called “downer” — an animal too sick or weak to walk by itself.

The USDA has referred to the records of the veterinarian that examined the cow Dec. 9, and says the inspection showed the cow to be a downer. USDA spokesman Steven Cohen said the cow had been injured during calving and was lying down when an inspector checked it at the slaughterhouse.

“In the opinion of the veterinarian that examined the animal, that was a nonambulatory animal,” Cohen said. The testing for mad cow disease was prompted by that conclusion.

Testing for mad cow disease in the United States has largely been limited to downer cows.

Cohen was unsure whether Louthan indeed killed the cow in question, and it was not clear whether the inspection occurred after Louthan has said he shot the cow and scooped out a sample of its brain. USDA officials were not available for additional comment Wednesday evening.

In his testimony Tuesday, Louthan said Vern's specialized in processing downed cows, and decried what he described as gut-wrenching treatment of the nonambulatory cattle, including ripping off their legs and leaving them to lie or cutting off their ears "so the dairy could save a plastic ear tag."

"I've seen and killed thousands of downers," said Louthan, who has said he enjoyed his slaughtering job before being fired. "I'm not the most sensitive guy in the world, but that makes me sick."

More cases expected

Although the cow was traced to a Canadian herd, more than 35 countries including Japan, Mexico and Korea have banned imports of American beef. Those bans, and the U.S. response to the mad cow finding, were the subject of review by a panel of experts, which reported their findings Wednesday to the USDA.

The panel noted there was a "high probability" that other infected cattle have been imported from Canada and possibly Europe. Their report gave no estimate of how many animals, and said contaminated material "has likely" been rendered into cattle feed.

Mad cow disease can be spread through livestock feed contaminated with high risk parts from infected animals, such as the brain, spinal cord or nervous system tissue. Hence, the panel suggested, federal officials should ban this specified risk material (SRM) in livestock feed and pet food to prevent the spread of mad cow disease.

"All SRM must be excluded from all animal feed, including pet food," the panel's chairman, Urlich Kihm, told a special meeting of USDA officials.

FACT FILE Battling mad cow disease

Steps planned by U.S. officials to help protect the food supply from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)

• 'Downer' cattle

• Test and hold

• Advanced meat recovery (AMR)

• Cattle tracking system

• Specified risk material (SRMs)

• Air stun guns

• Bans on feed

All cows considered non-ambulatory -- those that cannot walk by themselves -- when they reach a slaughter facility will be banned from human consumption. Even so, the USDA will continue to test them for BSE.

The meat of any animal selected for BSE testing by USDA inspectors will be held until the test results return as negative. (It can currently be sent into the food supply.)

Any animal condemned by inspectors for signs of 'systemic disease' during pre-slaughter inspections is barred from use for food.

In this process, machinery is used to remove muscle tissue from cow skeletons.

The USDA has called for more testing of AMR products, since some outlawed brain and spinal tissue has been found in this meat during testing. The agency will also ban AMR techniques on skulls and spinal columns of cows older than 30 months.

The USDA says it will speed up development of a system already being planned to identify and track all head of cattle in the United States. Groups inside and outside the beef industry have long called for a national tracking system.

Parts of some cattle known to be at high risk of transferring the proteins that cause mad cow disease will be banned from human food.

SRMs will include include brains, eyes, skulls, spinal cords and some other neural tissue of cows older than 30 months. Small intestines of all cattle will be banned.

The USDA also wants better procedures to ensure all these parts are separated from human supply.

Air-injection stunning devices will be banned. These guns use high pressure to ram an air blast, often through a bolt, into a cow's brain, killing it instantly. They make the slaughter process more humane, but can force bits of brain tissue into the rest of the animal, potentially tainting its meat.

The industry has been phasing out these devices and the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service was already working on a rule to prohibit them.

The FDA prohibits feeding mammal protein to ruminant animals, such as cows, sheep and goats. In January, the agency expanded that ban to include cattle blood. However, the feed can be given to other livestock; those animals' protein can be fed back to cattle.

The January changes also prohibit the use of rendered table scraps or "poultry litter" -- chickens' feathers, bedding and feces -- in cattle feed. The new regulations also require many rendering plants to separate production lines for cattle feed from those used to make feed for other livestock.

The panel also said the government should consider banning from human food the brain and spinal cords from all cattle over 12 months of age. Currently, such material is banned only from cattle over 30 months of age.

Also, All animal protein -- such as meat and bone meal from rendered animals -- should be banned from cattle feed, the panel said. Such a ban "is justified partly due to the issues of cross-contamination," it said.

Another necessary step is for the United States to test all "at risk" cattle over 30 months of age, the experts said. Those would include animals that die on the farm, which may require offering financial incentives to farmers.

The panel was appointed by Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman after the United States' first case of the brain-wasting disease was reported in a Holstein dairy cow in Washington state on Dec. 23. Discovery of the disease halted some $3.8 billion in annual American beef exports.

The infected U.S. cow found by the USDA last month was imported from Alberta, Canada, in 2001. Canada reported its own first domestic case of mad cow disease last May.

'A case a month'

Kihm said the United States "could have a case a month" of mad cow disease. He said he based that estimate on the experience of nations such as Denmark and Italy, and new studies showing that as little as 10 milligrams of infected brain tissue could infect a cow. Mad cow disease, the popular term for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, eats holes in the brains of cattle and is incurable.

COMPLETE COVERAGE

• Facing the fallout in health and business

However, Kihm said the United States would not see the kind of outbreak that hit Britain in the 1980s. Some 140 people, most in Britain, have died of the human form of the illness, caused by eating contaminated beef products.

Another member of the panel, William Hueston, director of the Center for Animal Health and Food Safety at the University of Minnesota, told reporters that he "wouldn't be surprised if they found two or three more cases in the United States."

Government officials downplayed Kihm's remarks.

"Even if there are more cases, we have already taken the measures that are needed to protect public health," said Ron DeHaven, the USDA's chief veterinarian, who is leading the investigation into the infected Washington state cow.

Another USDA official said scientific evidence suggested a "very, very low prevalence" of the disease in the United States, which slaughtered nearly 36 million cattle last year.

Stephen Sundlof, director of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Veterinary Medicine, said the panel's report "paints a very different picture" than a risk analysis prepared in 2001 by Harvard University researchers. That report concluded existing U.S. safeguards were adequate to deal with the disease.

Sundlof said the FDA had made no decisions on whether to follow the new recommendations.

Since the discovery last December, agriculture officials have killed more than 700 cows in Washington, Oregon and Idaho. And the USDA plans to boost mad cow tests to about 40,000 cattle this year, double the number tested last year.

"We would urge the government to come out with restrictions on specified risk materials that reflect the findings of this review panel," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director for the consumer group Center for Science in the Public Interest.

MSNBC's Jon Bonné, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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