Fw: Man Who Killed the Mad Cow Has Questions of His Own

[Guest guest]

February 3, 2004

 

Man Who Killed the Mad Cow Has Questions of His Own

 

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

 

Shooting a cow turned Dave Louthan into a crusader.On Dec. 9, at Vern's

Moses Lake Meats in Moses Lake, Wash., Mr. Louthan killed the only mad cow

found in the United States.Two weeks later, he says, he was dismissed after

four years as Vern's slaughterer when he talked to the television crews

outside and told them he was sure the cow, ground into hamburger, had

already been eaten. The plant's owners did not return calls seeking

comment. " I got a big mouth, " he said in a telephone interview.Since then, it

has gotten bigger.

Using borrowed computers < he has none of his own, only " a microwave and a

TV that gets four channels " < he started writing to newspapers, and is to

testify today before the Washington State Legislature.Contrary to reports

from the federal Department of Agriculture, he asserts that the cow he

killed was not too sick to walk.

And it was caught not by routine surveillance, he says, but by " a fluke " : he

killed it outdoors because he feared it would trample other cows lying

prostrate in its trailer, and the plant's testing program called for

sampling cows killed outside only. " Mad cows aren't downers, " he said.

" They're up and they're crazy. " The Agriculture Department disputes his

account. Dr. Kenneth Petersen, a food safety official, faxed copies of the

Dec. 9 inspector's report saying the cow was " sternal, " or down on its

chest.Mr. Louthan said he believed the government changed the report on Dec.

23, during the panic at Vern's when a positive test was found. The " smoking

gun, " he said, is that it is the only one on the page marked " unable to get

temp " while other cows' temperatures were recorded. It is easy, he said, to

get a rectal temperature from a downed cow but hard from a jumpy one. Dr.

Petersen said that he had no indication the records were altered and that

the veterinarian had told him the animal was lying so close to the trailer

wall that a thermometer could not be used. In his new role as bloody-handed

industry critic, Mr. Louthan argues that too few cattle are tested for mad

cow to say with certainty that beef is safe. " One mad cow is a scare, but

two is an epidemic, " he said. " They absolutely, positively don't want to

find another. "

Ed Curlett, a department spokesman, said about 83 a month were tested at

Vern's from October to December. (The testing began only in October, when

the government starting paying $10 a brain sample.) The department has not

changed last year's plans to test 40,000 cows nationwide this year, out of

30 million slaughtered. Janet Riley, a Spokeswoman for the American Meat

Institute, which represents slaughterhouses, called that " plenty sufficient

from a statistical standpoint. " Mr. Louthan, who lives across the street

from Vern's, said that the slaughtering was " still going like crazy " but

that an inspector in the plant told him no more mad cow testing was being

done. Dr. Petersen said he did not know if Vern's was testing. On Jan. 4, an

angry Mr. Louthan started sending e-mail messages to all the inspectors on

the department's Web site, asking, " Are you just going to sit there with

your hands in your pockets? " and accusing Agriculture Secretary Ann M.

Veneman of lying when she said American beef was safe.

Since then, he said, green department cars have parked outside his house

" trying to scare me. " He gave the name and number of one agent who

he said had told him to get in the car and ordered him to stop sending

e-mail.

The agent refused to speak to a reporter, but a spokesman said Mr. Louthan

had asked that they talk in the agent's car and the agent did not

intimidate, harass or argue with him.Mr. Louthan is no animal-rights

champion. His good-old-boy braggadocio and Texas drawl make him sound like a

parking-lot matador with a knocking gun < a tube with a blank pistol

cartridge that drives a bolt into the brain. Killing is " really fun, " and

beats deboning, which he calls " girls' work. "

" I'm fast, I'm efficient, and I know how to get in through their flight

zones, " he said, meaning the way nervous cows turn to flee.

At Vern's, he killed about 20 old dairy cows a day and buffaloes on

Thursdays, along with the odd ostrich, emu and alpaca.

The now famous cow, he said, was a white Holstein from the Sunny Dene Ranch

in Mabton, Wash.She was " a good walker, " he said. As the driver poked her

with a cattle prod, her eyes were " all white, bugging out. "

" She wouldn't come down that step, " he went on, " and I knew she was fixing

to double back in and trample the downers, and that's a mess, " so he killed

her there.

Mr. Louthan was also the plant's carcass splitter, and he has a

warning about that too.

With a 400-pound band saw, he said, splitters cleave the

spinal column from neck to tail as hot-water jets blast fat and bone dust

off the saw. The slurry, with spinal cord in it, " runs all over the beef, "

he said.

The carcasses are then hosed with hot water and sprayed with vinegar.

 

Bucky Gwartney, director of research for the National Cattlemen's Beef

Association, confirmed that most American slaughterhouses do the same. Since

the Dec. 31 ruling that all cows older than 30 months must have their brains

and spinal cords removed, " processors are actively looking at changes, " he

said.

Mr. Louthan said the agent who ordered him to be quiet suggested that he was

akin to " an urban terrorist " for spreading alarm about beef.

" I'm not, " Mr. Louthan said. " I just want to enjoy my cheeseburger like

anybody else. I don't want to think: is this the magic burger that's going

to kill me? "