USDA accused of lying about "downer" cow status in critical report

• WASHINGTON, July 13 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture's mad cow disease surveillance plan has numerous problems that may have reduced the chances of detecting the deadly disease among U.S. herds, according to a draft report from the agency's inspector general.
• Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who made the IG report available on his Web site, sent a letter Tuesday to Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman noting the House Government Reform Committee -- on which Waxman serves -- and a separate IG investigation not yet made available to the public, found additional evidence contradicting claims of USDA officials regarding potential U.S. cases of mad cow disease.
• The new evidence, contrary to what USDA has claimed, suggests the mad cow discovered in Washington state last December was not a downer, or an animal unable to stand.
• "The Inspector General's finding and the additional evidence obtained by the committee have major implications," Waxman, the ranking Democrat, wrote in the letter.
• The IG reports and Waxman's letter come the day before Veneman is scheduled to testify before a joint hearing of the reform committee and the House Agriculture Committee on the agency's screening program for mad cow disease, otherwise known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE.
• The IG audit of the mad cow surveillance plan details a slew of problems, including failure to test the riskiest animals, confusion among inspectors in the field due to inadequate training, and "an almost complete absence of available documentation" supporting the surveillance plan from 1990 through 2003.
• USDA officials sought to downplay both IG reports during a news briefing Tuesday.
• "First of all, this (report) is about our surveillance program," said Ron DeHaven, administrator of USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, who noted it was "unusual" for an IG report to be released in draft form without first getting comment from the federal agency in question.
• The concern is humans can contract a fatal, incurable brain illness from eating meat infected with the mad cow pathogen.
• Among the problems identified by IG report is the USDA's testing of only 162 of 680 cattle with signs of a brain disorder condemned at slaughter over the past two years.
• Other high-risk animals that may have escaped surveillance are those that die on farms.
• The only witness who has said the cow was a downer is Rodney Thompson, the USDA veterinarian who inspected the animal before it was slaughtered.
• The IG's audit of the mad cow program also faulted the agency's assessment that it could detect the disease if there were only five cases among the 446,000 high-risk animals, such as downers, dead and those with signs of brain disorders.