Originally published May 17 2005
USDA veterinarian accuses agency officials of mad cow disease cover-up
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A veterinarian who worked for the United States Department of Agriculture for 10 years says his former bosses have covered up cases of mad cow disease in the U.S. The man told members of Canada's Parliament in April that he knows of more than one case in which a private laboratory's positive test for the disease in a cow was overruled and declared negative by the USDA.
Federal investigators are looking into allegations by a former U.S. Agriculture Department inspector that the agency sought to cover up cases of mad cow disease, United Press International has learned.
Lester Friedlander, a former USDA veterinarian, told UPI he was questioned recently by two representatives from the USDA's Office of Inspector General who were investigating statements he made before Canada's Parliament in April.
Mad cow is a concern to public health because humans can contract a fatal brain illness known as variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease from eating beef products contaminated with the mad cow pathogen.
"I told them I'd take a lie detector just to prove I'm telling the truth."
"The next day he (McCaskey) called me up at my USDA office and said, 'If you ever find it, don't tell anybody,'" Friedlander said.
Friedlander said he began collecting brains from cows with symptoms that could indicate mad cow disease on his own in 1989, although the official USDA surveillance program did not start until 1990.
The plant received the most downer cows in the country -- 25 to 30 per day -- and included cows coming from multiple states ranging as far west as Texas, as far North as Maine and as far south as Florida, he said.
He said he was transferred from the Pennsylvania plant because he had "the highest" rate of condemning animals he deemed unsuitable for human consumption.
In another incident, Friedlander said Joe Oziano, a veterinarian from Veterinary Services in Michigan, informed him in 1995 that a cow brain he sent to be tested for mad cow disease at the USDA's lab in Ames, Iowa, was thrown away by lab personnel.
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