Leslie Friedlander repeated a claim he has made before that cases of bovine

spongiform encephalopathy surfaced in the U.S. long before the disease

showed up in Canada, devastating this country's beef industry.

Friedlander, who was fired from his job as head of inspections at a

meat-packing plant in Philadelphia in 1995 after criticizing what he called

unsafe practices, says he's willing to take a lie detector test to prove he

is telling the truth.

Washington has denied the allegations.

But the testimony raises a question that has been asked many times: 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.

CBC investigation probes case in New York

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.

Bobby Godfrey, who worked at the plant, remembers a cow that arrived one

day.

"I thought it was a mad dog, to tell you the truth," he told CBC's

Investigative Unit. "Didn't know what the hell it was. Never seen a cow act

like that in all the cows I saw go through there. There was definitely

something wrong with it."

The suspect cow, which was recorded on video obtained by CBC News, was

suspected of being the first American case of BSE.

Dr. Masuo Doi was the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) veterinarian in

charge of investigating the cow.

"Me and my vet, including our inspector, they thought it [the cow] was quite

different. They thought it was the BSE," he said.

Doi, who recently retired from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, says he's

haunted by fears the right tests were not done and that the case was not

properly investigated by his own department.

"I don't want to carry on off to my retirement. I want to hand it over to

someone to continue, to find out. I think it's very, very important," said

Doi, who has never spoken out publicly about his concerns, until now.

Validity of tests called into question

Documents obtained by CBC News show that the U.S. government was preparing

for the worst. Initial signs pointed to mad cow disease. But further tests

were negative.

The final conclusion from an independent university lab: a rare brain

disorder never reported in that breed of cattle either before or since, but

not BSE.

But CBC News has learned that key areas of the brain were never tested. The

most important samples somehow went missing.

It's all in a USDA lab report that was left out of the documents officially

released by the department. It proves the scientist in charge knew his

investigation of the case was limited.

Without the samples, the question remains: Could scientists really rule out

mad cow disease?

Dr. Karl Langheindrich was the chief scientist at a USDA lab in Athens, Ga.,

the lab that ran some of the early tests on the cow. Now retired, he too

never spoke publicly about this case before being interviewed by CBC.

Without the missing brain tissue, he says, the USDA will never be able to

say for sure what was wrong with the cow.

"Based on the clinical symptoms and the description given by the

veterinarian you can verify, yes this animal had CNS, central nervous system

disease, but you can't specify it in your findings further than that," he

said.

Second suspected case surfaces at same plant

With questions about the first cow still lingering, three months later at

the same meat plant there was a second American cow with suspicious

symptoms.

The second cow's brain was sent for testing and officials were told verbally

the tests were negative.

Doi made repeated requests for documentary proof of the negative tests. To

this day, he's seen nothing.

"How many are buried?" he wonders. "Can you really trust our inspection

[system?]

For weeks, the USDA told CBC that it had no records for the second cow. 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, there were problems with the

testing. This time, so much brain tissue was missing it compromised the

examination.

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.

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