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May-June 2004 Issue

FDA Investigators Respond to Mad Cow Emergency

By Lina Bren

When Food and Drug Administration investigator Scott Nabe arrived at the Columbia River Gorge that separates Washington and Oregon in December 2003, he wasn't paying attention to the stunning beauty described by explorers Lewis and Clark nearly 200 years earlier.

All he could think about was keeping his car on the icy road so he could get to his destination. His mission: To make sure that no parts of a "mad cow" got into the food supply for people or animals.

On Dec. 23, 2003, the FDA was alerted to the first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), known as mad cow disease, in the United States. The infected cow from a farm in Washington had been slaughtered two weeks earlier and the meat and byproducts from the animal traveled the normal slaughtering path: The edible parts went to meat processors for making into hamburgers and steaks, while the inedible parts went to renderers to grind into meal for animal feed and fat for soap and other products. The brain went to a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) laboratory in Ames, Iowa, for BSE testing.

Once informed that the tissue from the cow had tested positive, the FDA took immediate action, mobilizing teams of investigators in the agency's Seattle district. The FDA, along with the USDA, had to ensure recovery and destruction of as many parts of the infected cow as possible.

Nabe and fellow FDA investigator John Emmert made up one of the two-member teams who responded to the emergency. The teams traveled through three states-Washington, Oregon, and Idaho-to recover the cow and its byproducts. Logging more than 1,400 miles in one week, Nabe and Emmert drove through ice- and snow-covered mountain passes to track down the byproducts. The FDA teams encountered "some of the worst winter weather in a long time, with much snow, ice, and extremely dangerous fog," says Celeste Corcoran, the director of investigations in the FDA's Seattle district.

Investigators canceled holiday plans and leave when they were notified of the emergency. John Banks, who was off-duty in Boise, Idaho, received a call from his supervisor the night of Dec. 23. Early the next morning, he was on a flight to Spokane, Wash., and he and fellow investigator Gordon Wales were inspecting a rendering plant by 9:30 a.m.

FDA investigator Dawn Barkans got the word three days later in the middle of a move from Seattle to Bainbridge Island, Wash. "I dropped my mom, daughter, and fellow movers off at the new house and drove to Tacoma to meet up with my team member," she says.

Before the investigation was completed, 30 FDA employees in the Seattle area and a number of state inspectors from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho had become involved. The response was tremendous, says Steven Solomon, D.V.M., deputy director of the FDA's Office of Regional Operations. "The Seattle district had more volunteers than they could use. They did an outstanding job of responding quickly and efficiently to address the finding of the first BSE cow in the United States."

The Next 32 Days

For the BSE investigators, the next 32 days were filled with long hours, little sleep, hazardous driving conditions, isolated motels, and truck stop dining on holidays when no other businesses were open. During the day, they trudged through snow, mud, gravel, and grease to inspect feed mills, farms, calf feeder lots, slaughterhouses, meat processors, hide recyclers, tanneries, and grocery stores. At night, they took part in conference calls, wrote out notes from the day's work, and communicated summaries of their findings to

Corcoran.

Phone calls went back and forth all night and into the early morning hours to resolve questions about the information provided. "We knew everyone was relying heavily on our information and wanted it to be absolutely accurate," says Corcoran, who orchestrated the local incident command investigation from the FDA office in Seattle and provided frequent update reports to the Emergency Operations Center at FDA headquarters in Rockville, Md.

About 96 hours after the FDA was notified of the BSE-infected cow, the agency was able to announce that all of the potentially infectious rendered byproducts of the cow had been found and contained. But the investigation continued as additional firms were inspected and reinspected to confirm that all products were accounted for. FDA investigators also assisted the USDA in meat recall checks at retail stores, and they witnessed the destruction of meat and byproducts at landfills.

By day 32 of the emergency response, about 2,000 tons of cattle byproducts were being safely disposed of. No other BSE-infected cows were found, but if feed or other products had even a small possibility of being mixed with parts of the BSE-positive cow, they were destroyed. "There was extensive commingling with rendered products from other animals," says Solomon. "For safety assurance, we wanted to make sure we captured all the materials bracketed within the time period when infected material may have been processed."

Challenging Conditions

FDA investigators traced potentially contaminated products to renderers, grocery stores, meat suppliers, and even a hide recycler. "Early on we vowed we would track 'everything but the moo' of the BSE cow," says Corcoran. "We wanted to ensure that no parts of the hide from the cow, not even any flesh scrapings, could have been diverted to animal feed or other use."

The investigators worked painstakingly to collect the information they needed from worried, but cooperative, business owners.

"The owners felt this was the end to their livelihood," says William Hughes, who investigated a meat processing plant in Washington. "The business they built up from scratch over the years was destroyed through no fault of their own." As one owner was copying records requested by Hughes, "she was very distraught," he says. "They had a lot of raw meat product that they needed to have in a cooler. They didn't have space for the meat at their facilities, and no one wanted to touch it." Not only did other companies not want to handle the product, they didn't want to be associated with the name of the meat processor, says Hughes. "It was heartbreaking."

While the USDA tracked the finished meat products for human consumption, the FDA tracked the inedible material generated by grocery stores, such as scraps produced from grinding up meat for ground beef. The challenge here was "not a real consistency among grocery stores, or even among chains," says Emmert, who investigated several grocery stores in Oregon. "Some stores would save the scraps to give to an old customer for feed. Others would throw the scraps in barrels for a rendering firm to pick up, and some would throw them in the garbage to go to a landfill." Emmert had to make sure the scraps were held and disposed of properly to prevent their entry into the human or animal food chain.

"I had a deep-felt sense of pride in who I was working for and what we were trying to accomplish," says Emmert. "The grocery stores acted quickly and more than necessary to protect their customers and the public." The USDA had given the stores specific code dates and lot numbers of the products that they needed to remove from the shelves. "But they didn't take any chances," says Emmert. "They just pulled everything and emptied the shelves quickly."

"Members of the Seattle District Office and state inspectors from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho worked together with unceasing and extraordinary dedication for this national emergency," says Corcoran.

It was never a question of how much effort it took, says Barkans. "It just always came back to ... What do we need to do to get the job done and ensure that the public is protected?"

FDA Office of Public Affairs