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Inspector general details flaws in madcow testing { July 15 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)    http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/15/politics/15cow.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/15/politics/15cow.html July 15, 2004 Inspector General Details Flaws in Mad Cow Testing By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. WASHINGTON, July 14 - The Agriculture Department's inspector general testified Wednesday that her investigation of two well-known incidents involving testing for mad cow disease had uncovered no criminal or intentional misconduct. But she said the cases illustrated what could go wrong in the vastly expanded federal inspection program begun last month. The inspector general, Phyllis K. Fong, told a joint session of two House committees, Government Reform and Agriculture, that the two cases revealed confusion within the department, failures to follow regulations, disagreements between inspectors and slaughterhouse owners, and other weaknesses. Ms. Fong is independent of Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman and was not appointed by her. On Tuesday, a report Ms Fong wrote that was harshly critical of the department's plans to test more than 220,000 cows by the end of 2005 - up from a maximum of 20,000 a year - was released to the news media. At Wednesday's hearing, Ms. Veneman defended the testing program, including its voluntary nature, which is criticized in the report. She said its statistical basis was sound and noted that the department had been congratulated on the plan by the head of a team of international experts. The two incidents Ms. Fong discussed were those of the dairy cow in Moses Lake, Wash., that became the country's lone case of mad cow disease, last Dec. 23, and another in which a cow slaughtered in Texas in April was not tested even though it had symptoms of a brain disease. In the first case, a slaughterer said that the diseased cow had been walking when he killed it but that a federal veterinarian inspector had rewritten paperwork to say the cow was a "downer," too sick to walk. The issue is important because the department argued for years that it would find the disease even if it tested only relatively small numbers of downer cattle. If the diseased cow was not a downer, the rationale for testing only those cows would be cast into doubt. While the slaughterer, Dave Louthan, told reporters last winter that he suspected that the veterinarian had been pressured to falsify the paperwork, Ms. Fong said she found no evidence of that. Investigators said Mr. Louthan refused to give a sworn statement. Ms. Fong said the veterinarian, Dr. Rodney Thompson, did not comply with departmental rules, including requirements that he put ear tags on the suspect cow and take its temperature. On Dec. 23, after tissue from the cow tested positive, she said, Dr. Thompson "updated and annotated" the forms he had filled out Dec. 9, including writing "unable to get temp" about the cow. Dr. Thompson did not appear at the hearing and has not spoken to reporters. Several witnesses disagreed about whether the cow walked that day, Ms. Fong said. The plant's owner refused to call it a downer because he had a written policy of not accepting downers, even though he had just accepted a trailer of 11 cows, 9 of them dead or unable to walk. The cow's dairy said the animal had walked onto the trailer, but weakly. The hauler said it walked on, but not off. The report also said a temporary inspector at the plant said its testing was "not as well-organized as at other plants" where she worked. In the second case, news reports said a department veterinarian had started to take a brain sample from a staggering cow he thought had brain disease, but was overruled by a regional officer. The inspector general cited a series of errors: The cow was killed and marked unfit for human food when it should have been sent alive to Texas A&M University for testing. Before the veterinarian could take a brain sample, plant officials refused to keep the carcass. The plant's vice president called the department's regional headquarters and argued that the cow died of wheat poisoning, not a brain disease. The regional officer, who was from a different branch of the department from the inspector, agreed that he had canceled the test, but had a different recollection from the inspector of what the two had agreed about the cow's symptoms. The Agriculture Department's chief economist, Dr. Keith Collins, also testified on Wednesday. He acknowledged that the department's argument that there was "zero risk" of mad cow disease in apparently healthy cattle was merely "a working assumption - an assumption to get the data collection started, not an estimate of the prevalence." Some critics disagreed with that assumption, he said, adding, "We respect that, and we've agreed that we'll look at the issue." Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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