Steve Quayle News Alerts

Feb. 19, 2004
By Jon Bonné, MSNBC

The owner of the slaughterhouse that killed the first U.S. cow found with mad cow disease has come forward to confirm that the cow was able to walk at the time it was killed.

Tom Ellestad, who with his family runs Vern's Moses Lake Meats, where the sick cow was slaughtered, says the cow could walk at the time it was killed and disputed the portrayal of his plant as one that mostly handled sick and injured cattle.

His claim further throws into doubt the insistence of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that the cow couldn't walk at the time it was killed, which required that it be tested for mad cow disease, as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, a fatal brain disease, is commonly known.

Ellestad also accused the USDA of falling short of its responsibility to keep the public safe both before the Dec. 23 announcement that mad cow disease had arrived in the United States and after its Dec. 30 decision to ban downed cattle from the food supply, which it claimed would be a major step in ensuring consumers' health.

"Our business had been devastated," Ellestad said in an affidavit compiled by the Government Accountability Project, which protects whistleblowers. "Our reputation had been maligned and the USDA knew the truth but had chosen not to make the truth about the BSE not being a downer available to the public."

His 18-page affidavit, and more than 20 pages of supporting documents, were supplied to the U.S. House Government Reform Committee, which requested earlier this week that the USDA toughen its testing plans for mad cow disease. BSE can infect people who eat tainted meat with variant Creutzfelt-Jakob disease, which attacks the brain and is always fatal. Hundreds of victims have died from variant CJD, mostly in England, where a mad cow outbreak in the 1980s and early 1990s became a public-health crisis.

Ellestad's assertion also further backs claims made by one of his workers, Dave Louthan, who said he killed the infected animal and has publicly insisted it could walk. Louthan recently detailed his recollection of the events of Dec. 9, the day the ailing Holstein was slaughtered, in an interview with MSNBC.

Was diseased cow indeed a 'downer'?

Downers rejected

Vern's stopped accepting "downer" cows in February 2003, Ellestad said, and required all the farms that sent it animals and all the drivers that transported the cattle to sign agreements that they would not load any cow that could not walk onto a trailer.

He provided copies of a February 2003 agreement signed by the driver who transported the infected cow, stating that he would not bring Vern's livestock that "have been loaded as 'downers.'"

The driver, Randy Hull Jr., also submitted an affidavit confirming that all the cows picked up from the Sunny Dene Ranch, in Mabton, Wash., where the infected cow was kept since being brought into the country from Canada in 2001, were not downers. "The animals each walked onto my trailer," Hull said.

Ellestad acknowledged many animals at his plant were lying down in the trailers when they arrived or were skittish, and so were taken to the back of the slaughterhouse, where they were hoisted into kill pens. As such, they were considered "back door" cattle, not downers. This arrangement, he said, was part of a more humane killing procedure that minimized the use of cattle prods to force cows that were sitting or lying down to walk up a chute to the slaughter pens.

According to an deal struck with USDA officials, only back-door cattle had brain samples taken for BSE testing. All the cows on the trailer that contained the infected animal were back-door animals, according to the facility's daily kill sheet.

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.

In fact, Ellestad insisted, he had originally rejected the USDA's request to conduct testing at his facility because it specified that they test downed cattle, and he did not consider any of the animals processed at his plant to be downers. Vern's began testing for mad cow disease in October, and took 258 samples by the end of the year.

Some 20,000 cows out of about 35 million slaughtered in the United States last year were tested for BSE. The samples from Vern's, which is classified as a "very small" plant by USDA standards, would account for more than 1 percent of all cows tested.

All along, USDA officials have maintained that the cow in question could no longer walk, in part due to injuries sustained from giving birth to calves while at the Sunny Dene Ranch, located about 60 miles from Moses Lake, Wash.

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

Slaughter records provided to MSNBC by the USDA indicate the cow suffered internal bleeding and an enlarged uterus, typical injuries from calf birth but not a sign that an animal could not walk.

Ed Loyd, a USDA spokesman, denied Ellestad’s claims to The Associated Press. The department has said a veterinarian at the plant tagged the cow as a downer. “Our records clearly indicate that this animal was not able to walk,” Loyd said.

The USDA previously turned down a request by MSNBC to interview the veterinarian who inspected the cow.

Difficult definitions

Because his plant made the special distinction for "back door" animals, Ellestad stressed that he and USDA officials had repeated disagreements about the definition of downer cows.

He released a corrected copy of a statement in his name prepared by USDA officials that indicates the disagreement between them. He also recalled a heated discussion with a USDA deputy administrator over who should accept the cost of the voluntary recall of some 10,000 pounds of meat processed that day at Vern's. That official, Ellestad said, had threatened potential legal action against Vern's. Later, Ellestad said, the USDA backed down and told him they would pay him for some recall costs — if he accepted liability.

Rather than helping him, Ellestad said, the USDA had tried to create a "smokescreen" to shift blame away from themselves by categorizing Vern's as a "downer plant," which he insists it is not.

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

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.

• Test and hold

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.

• Advanced meat recovery (AMR)

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.

• Cattle tracking system

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.

• Specified risk material (SRMs)

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 stun guns

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.

• Bans on feed

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.

At most plants a cow that could walk — including the infected animal, as Ellestad and others have asserted — would never have been tested and would have entered the food chain.

"I believe that USDA has been willing to let the issue of whether this cow was a downer detract from the critical issue of what cattle should actually be tested," he said. "I personally feel that we need an extensive testing program for fully ambulatory cattle."

Though Ellestad submitted a Dec. 26 request to have all beef at his plant tested, he said no tests have been performed and included a handwritten note from the USDA telling him to stop collecting brain samples as of Dec. 29.

Ellestad's version of events Dec. 9 differs somewhat from Louthan, one of his former employees, who has claimed he killed the ailing cow — which was standing — because it was beginning to balk when being taken off the trailer. Ellestad said in his affidavit he shared kill duties that day with another employee, but added he wasn't sure which one of them killed that specific cow.

However, Ellestad's recollection does match Louthan in some key aspects — notably that the sick cow was one of the first few in the gate end of the trailer. All four cows near the trailer gate were able to stand, Ellestad said, including the ailing one later tested to have BSE.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4313278/