naturalnews.com printable article

Originally published March 26 2004

USDA insider reveals the truth: mad cow disease is epidemic, USDA labs fraudulently cover up test results

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

This is one of the most important stories on mad cow disease to come out yet. If what this article says is true, it means the USDA is engaged in a massive coverup of mad cow disease. They accomplish this by using a bogus laboratory that routinely determines all cow brain samples to be "negative" for mad cow disease, even when they are positive. This lab, called the National Veterinary Services Laborities, is extremely secretive and has refused to release test results to veterinarians. The situation is so bad that veterinarians call the USDA's mad cow surveillance program, "a laughing matter."

But here's where it gets interesting: the coverup is so deep and so dangerous that a USDA insider spoke to United Press International about what's really happening there. He said, "Most agency veterinarians know mad cow is prevalent and epidemic (in U.S. herds). We're not talking about one or two cases." This quote should be downright shocking. It's yet more insider evidence that the USDA has long been engaged in a massive coverup designed to protect the beef industry, not consumers.

It gets better: "The USDA has such a cohesive relationship with industry ...that it wants to protect the $70 billion beef industry more than consumers," the veterinarian said. Exactly! That's what I've been saying here all along. The USDA is a highly corrupt organization, and it is clearly working to protect the industry at the cost of public health. A thorough look at the agency's behaviors leaves no doubt.

So here's how the USDA manages to hoodwink the entire country on mad cow disease. First, they limit mad cow testing to make sure there's hardly any chance of finding it. Second, they control all the tests and rig them to make sure they produce negative results. Third, any case of mad cow disease that manages to slip through this deception is retroactively modified -- records are fraudulently edited to classify the cow as a "downer" cow, which is exactly what happened with the case of mad cow disease found in Oregon (the USDA threatened a meat inspector and forced him to alter the records of the cow, but three witnesses say the cow walked right off the truck, so it obviously wasn't a downer cow).

Meanwhile, the USDA proudly announces to the U.S. public that the nation's beef is entirely safe. Mad cow disease doesn't exist in the U.S., they say, and people should keep on buying and eating red meat.

It's all a lie, of course. Mad cow is "epidemic" according go the USDA insider mentioned here. The lab results are fraudulent. The cover-up is swift. That's the USDA in action, which demonstrates that when it comes to government agencies like the FDA and USDA, the financial interests of private industry always come first, and public safety always comes last.

What we're really looking at here is an unprecedented public health scandal, one that's eventually going to break wide open and expose these agencies for their criminal actions. The people in charge at the USDA and FDA should be imprisoned, not left to control the safety of foods and medicine.



WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 (UPI) -- The federal laboratory in Ames, Iowa, that conducts all of the nation's tests for mad cow disease has a history of producing ambiguous and conflicting results -- to the point where many federal meat inspectors have lost confidence in it, Department of Agriculture veterinarians and a deer rancher told United Press International. The veterinarians also claim the facility -- part of the USDA and known as the National Veterinary Services Laboratories -- has refused to release testing results to them and has been so secretive some suspect it is covering up additional mad cow cases. Distrust of the NVSL is so widespread among USDA veterinarians and meat inspectors it limits mad cow disease surveillance "tremendously," said a veterinarian with more than 25 years of experience with the agency. The veterinarian, who requested anonymity because he feared repercussions, said many agency inspectors do not consider it worth the trouble to inspect cows closely for signs of mad cow disease or to send brain samples to the NVSL because there is little chance the lab will issue a positive result, even if the cow is infected. An international panel of mad cow experts, commissioned by the USDA to review the agency's response to the animal that tested positive for mad cow in Washington state in December, reached a similar conclusion in a report they issued last week. The panel said it was "probable" additional infected cows had been imported from Canada and Europe, some of which had been turned into cow feed and indigenously infected U.S. herds. Stanley Hall, who owns a deer herd in Almond, Wis., has been embroiled in a legal battle with the USDA since 2002 over whether one of his deer tested positive for chronic-wasting disease. Williams concluded in her report that abnormal prions, the agent thought to cause CWD, were "not detected." Williams noted, however, that the sample consisted only of the caudal medulla oblongata region of the brain and not the preferred obex region, meaning early infection with chronic wasting disease could not be ruled out. The USDA has not responded for more than a year to a request filed by Hall's attorney, Gary Drier in Stevens Point, Wis., under the Freedom of Information Act, asking for additional information about the tissue sample in question and how it was processed. The anonymous USDA veterinarian said NVSL often refuses to provide test results, even to the inspector who initially requested the test. The international panel's report advised the USDA to decentralize its mad cow testing program and permit other labs around the country to conduct tests and help facilitate the rapid testing of suspect animals.


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