American nightmare

摘要

At vern's Slaughterhouse in Moses Lake, Washington, Tuesday 9 December 2003 was a busy day. "We were swamped," recalls slaughterman Dave Louthan - especially with "downers", sickly cows too weak to stand. Amid the rush, one cow caught Louthan's attention - a white, 6-year-old Holstein standing in a truck at the downers' entrance. She was causing trouble, and Louthan admits he should have taken her round to the pens where cattle that could walk awaited slaughter. "But I was in a hurry," he says, "and she didn't want to step down off the trailer." Before she could trample the other cattle, "I put a hole in her forehead". At that time the US Department of Agriculture was paying slaughterhouses for brain samples from downers, to test for BSE. The Holstein was officially among the downers, so Louthan took a sample. Two weeks later, the USDA announced that the cow was the first case of BSE detected in the US.