Suspected mad cow, from a USDA video.

I do not have cable tv, but it would appear, based on the Internet, that American media sources are burying the story. Time to blow the whistle...

<,/blockquote> The following is a link to the television media coverage of these suspected American cases of Mad Cow disease, which given how Americans are probably not seeing the same coverage on their television channels, I post here... Real Media Video Link ... or also in the form of a Quicktime video link... The story is being given headline coverage in Canada, since the last public mad cow case in the United States was blamed on what was called ‘an immigrant Canadian Mad Cow'. The two suspected cases predate this incident, and the one cow that was reported, while it was born in Alberta, Canada, then due to the Free Trade Agreement, crossed over to the United States as a young calf, and lived its entire adult life on a Washington State dairy farm. Under ‘Free trade' there is no longer any such things as a ‘Canadian cow' or an ‘American' or ‘Mexican' cow, since cows now cross back and forth over the border with even greater ease than people do.

A whistle blower from the USDA has appeared to testify before a Canadian Parliamentary committee, since it would seem that he could not get a hearing before the American Congress or by the American media, so he decided to blow the whistle in Canada.

According to the print story on the CBC News site,

The United States did not properly analyze two suspected cases of mad cow disease in 1997, years before it showed up in Canada and devastated this country's beef industry, a CBC News investigation suggests.

Dr. Masuo Doi (a former USDA vet) ... is now retired and speaking for the first time about his concerns. "I don't want to carry on off to my retirement," he told CBC's Investigative Unit. "I want to hand it over to someone to continue, to find out. I think it's very, very important ... "How many did we miss?"

Documents obtained by CBC show that the samples tested by the department did not contain parts of the animal's brain critical for an accurate diagnosis.

1997 video from New York shows stricken cow

The scientists' comments raise new questions about how the U.S. industry has been able to essentially escape BSE when Canada's much smaller industry, observing almost identical safety and testing practices, has had four cases in the past two years. Part of the answer could be in a slaughterhouse in Oriskany Falls, N.Y., which eight years ago may have become the home of the first American case of mad cow.

The suspect cow was recorded on USDA videotape, which has been obtained by CBC News. CBC News has now learned that key areas of the brain where signs of BSE would be most noticeable were never tested. The most important samples somehow went missing. That information was contained in a USDA lab report that was left out of the documents officially released by the department. It proves that the scientist in charge of the case knew his investigation was limited because of the missing brain tissue.

With questions about the first cow still lingering, a second American cow showed up at the same plant three months later with suspicious symptoms. Videotape of that animal shows its head was bobbing and it was unable to rise to its feet, setting off warning bells for mad cow disease. The second cow's brain was also sent for testing. Officials were later told verbally that the samples had tested negative for BSE. Doi made repeated requests for documentary proof of the negative tests. To this day, he has seen nothing. "How many are buried?" he wonders of other possible cases of BSE in the United States. "Can you really trust our inspection [system]?" For weeks, the USDA told CBC that it had no records for the second cow suspected of having BSE in 1997. Then just a few days ago, it suddenly produced documents that it says proves that a cow was tested and that the tests were negative for mad cow disease. But the documents also prove, once again, that there were problems with the testing. This time, so much brain tissue was missing that it compromised the examination. 2nd suspected mad cow, from a USDA video. The problems were so severe that one USDA scientist wrote that his own examination was of "questionable validity" because he couldn't tell what part of the cow's brain he was looking at.

The story goes on to report a consistent pattern of parts of cow brains mysteriously disappearing before testing. Click the link for the full article, and see the videos for more information, as well as videos of the suspected American mad cows which were somehow given to CBC news investigative reporters.

I have links to quite a few mad cow stories on my web site, since I have been following this issue for years. Really, with something like this, it is just a matter of time for things to unravel and a scandal to unfold, and the longer the delay, the bigger the scandal at the end of it all...

Previous mad cow stories...

Mad Cow U.S.A

Shoot shovel and shut up. Just eat the young mad cows and hide the old ones. A description of North America's official mad cow policy.

Common practice for Ranchers to hide Mad Cow disease.

Peak Oil, Mad Cow, and 9-11 : connecting the dots ... This page describes how after the Washington Mad Cow incident was blamed on Canada, the USDA moved to end all Mad Cow testing in the U.S.A.

Mad Cow "indigenous" to North America Mad cow has home on US ranges International experts say

Mad Deer Disease : SouthWest Wisconsin weeks into program to 'kill every deer'

US Government bans sick cattle from food chain ... If they have some other disease, other than mad cow, then, one assumes, Americans will continue to eat them. This, I suppose, counts as progress.

Mad Cow disease - an agricultural chemical connection?

BSE