USDA accused of altering the official report on Mad Cow animal's condition: "Phyllis K. Fong, the USDA inspector general, told Congress earlier this month that she is conducting an investigation into whether officials had falsified documents and that it could lead to criminal charges.
...The growing controversy in the background of yesterday's decision has focused on whether the infected animal detected in Washington state in December was a downer. Veneman said then that the cow definitely could not walk -- a statement that reassured the public that the animal was sick and had been identified by a well-functioning surveillance system.
But the hauler who picked up the cow said later that it had walked onto the trailer, and he and two workers at the slaughterhouse have said that it stood when it arrived. One of the employees, slaughterer David Louthan, has accused the USDA of altering the official report on the animal's condition. That accusation is being investigated as a possible criminal act, Fong said in a congressional hearing this month.
The question of whether the cow was a downer has also been at the heart of the debate over the surveillance system. USDA officials have said that testing a limited number of animals, most of them downers, is sufficient to tell whether the disease is present.
But in the Washington case, Tom Ellestad, the slaughterhouse owner, has said that many of the brain samples he supplied to the USDA were not from downers, and that the USDA knew that to be the case. In a long account of the entire BSE incident he wrote with the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit whistle-blower group, Ellestad said his company had contracts with suppliers making clear that he would accept only animals that could walk onto the trailer that takes them to slaughter."
- posted by geoff @ #