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Former USDA Inspector Questions Mad Cow Testing

April 14, 2005
A former U.S. Department of Agriculture inspector is claiming that his government covered up mad cow disease, years before a case turned up in Canada. In a CTV.ca interview, Lester Friedlander said he was "forced out" from his job as head of inspections at a large Philadelphia meat packing plant in 1995 after blowing the whistle on what he called unsafe practices.

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Friedlander said he knows USDA veterinarians who sent suspect cow brains to private laboratories that confirmed bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) -- commonly known as mad cow disease -- but that USDA laboratories cleared the samples.

He said there was pressure from Washington for veterinarians to "look the other way."

Canadian cattlemen are still seething about the U.S. embargo of Canadian cattle instituted in 2003 after a single infected cow was found. Since then four others have been found in Canada.

With 120 million cattle in the United States and 15 million in Canada, the Canadians are suspicious of U.S. claims that the U.S. herd is clear of the deadly infection.

Friedlander alleges the department tried to hide mad-cow cases because "at one time, the United States was exporting to over 90 countries. If mad cow disease is found in the United States, look at the economic impact it would have on the whole country," CTV.ca reported.

Michael Hansen, a scientist with the Consumers Union in Washington, said there is suspicion surrounding the testing of three suspected cases of mad cow in U.S. cattle. He said the tests came back negative but that the USDA used a rapid test based on immuno-histochemistry, which is considered less reliable than other tests.

A study by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis three years ago concluded there was a 20 per cent chance that mad cow was likely to be found in U.S. cattle.

The U.S. border was set to reopen to young Canadian cattle March 7 tbut a U.S. cattlemen's group went to court and obtained an injunction blocking the action.

In Canada, a group representing 100,000 farmers filed a $7 billion class-action lawsuit against the Canadian federal government, claiming that gross negligence allowed BSE to devastate the cattle industry.

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