031261 Plant Owner Disputes Finding That Cow Seemed Sick

Moses Lake, OR - Standing in the frozen mud outside his barn-red slaughterhouse near Interstate 90, Tom Ellestad insisted Friday that federal scientists aren't serving up the whole truth about the nation's first case of mad cow disease.

"They say it was a 'downer' cow," said Ellestad, who runs Vern's Moses Lake Meats Co. with his brother Larry. "I'll tell you, it was no 'downer.' " He said his business refuses to slaughter cows that appear sick, keeping them out of the food supply, and that the infected cow looked "relatively healthy."

But as Ellestad made his stand, U.S. Department of Agriculture scientists released more details of the cow's sorry state before slaughter, Dec. 9. There was no mistaking it: The cow was a "downer." Government inspectors found the animal stuck on its sternum and unable to get up and walk, they said.

The infected Holstein was butchered with 19 other cows in one of Ellestad's weathered, concrete-block buildings.

When asked why Ellestad was telling a different version of the story, Dan Puzo, an agriculture department spokesman who has been working with the meat company, simply said, "I have no idea."

One possibility is that Ellestad, whose father bought the slaughterhouse in 1970, feels overwhelmed. He admits as much. "I don't know what to make of this yet," he said, forcing a smile. "It's unprecedented in the meat industry."

His small operation is in the middle of a storm roiling the industry.

Government officials had said there was no threat to the human food supply because the cow's brain, the spinal cord and the lower part of the small intestine -- the disease is found anywhere in these parts -- were removed before it was shipped off for processing. But Ellestad declined to talk about how his company removes a cow's nervous system from its meat without leaving contaminated tissue on the carcass.

"I'm not going to go into the science of it," he said.

U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors give "downer" cows -- those that can't walk or are having trouble walking -- extra attention, testing the most obviously sick for disease. But they can be slaughtered before the test results are known.

Rosemary Mucklow, executive director of the National Meat Association in Oakland, Calif., thinks better safeguards are needed. At the same time, she said, "the odds are really against" any diseased nerve tissue being left on a carcass on the slaughterhouse floor -- if the industry's standard slaughter process is followed.

Typically, a cow's brain is severed first and dumped with its head in a cabinet to be shipped to a rendering plant, she said. After the spinal chord is removed, the butcher is supposed to use a high-powered vacuum to suck up any remaining tissue in the spinal channel.

"They sterilize all of their equipment before moving on to the next carcass," Mucklow said, "and the carcasses aren't allowed to touch each other."

Inside Vern's in Moses Lake, a sign urged customers to return any beef tongue, heart, lips, cheeks, livers, kidney, oxtail and bull fries purchased on or after Dec. 9 for a full refund. Meat locker doors clicked open and closed as federal inspectors in hard hats walked briskly around the plant.

As a delivery truck driver prepared to leave, Ellestad thanked him for his business. "Remember what we talked about," Ellestad added with a wave.

Government officials maintain that the company specializes in slaughtering aging dairy cows, which can no longer produce enough milk or are injured. But Ellestad disputes that.

"There isn't a specialty," he said, adding that he brings in a combination of dairy cows and grain-fed feedlot cows. Most of the carcasses are shipped off and turned into ground beef, he said.

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