February 11, 2004 Spokesman Review (Spokane, WA) by Carla K. Johnson

His filing system is a cluttered dining room table. He rents the computer he's learning to use. He hadn't been involved in politics before he started taking on the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

But starting with a letter to the editor and a few e-mails, he's gained national attention. He's gone from being considered, in his words, ''a kook, a terrorist or an idiot," to being featured in The New York Times, interviewed by Japanese news crews and testifying before the Washington state Legislature.

''Now people are honking at me and waving at me," Louthan said. ''I'm going to Washington, D.C., and knock on the front door and ask them, 'What the hell?"'

He's not having delusions of grandeur. A San Francisco radio talk show host with a national audience is raising money to send Louthan to the nation's capital. Or at least to Houston.

''His main message is he wants to enjoy a good greasy cheeseburger again and he wants to see testing of every slaughtered head in America," said All-American Talk Radio host Peter B. Collins, who has featured Louthan on his show twice.

The talk show host asked his 100,000 listeners for donations to help Louthan publicize his call for more cattle testing.

At first, the idea was to send Louthan to Washington, D.C. But now it seems more likely Louthan would testify to the House Agriculture Committee at a hearing on animal identification March 5 in Houston.

''But no one's invited him yet," the radio host pointed out.

The Democratic House Government Reform Committee also is interested in what Louthan has to say, said Karen Lightfoot, a spokeswoman for committee chairman Rep. Henry A. Waxman of California.

She called from Washington, D.C., to confirm that Louthan has talked to one of the committee's lead investigators.

''We're very interested in trying to understand what went on," she said.

The New York Times ran a story and photograph of Louthan on Feb. 3, the day he testified in Olympia before the state Legislature.

''I'm the poorest famous person you'll ever meet," Louthan said at his small gray house, which belongs to his girlfriend. His most expensive possession is a Ford pickup with steer horns strapped to the front bumper.

He got the horns off a steer that butted him at Vern's Moses Lake Meats, where he worked. Vern's was one of the few slaughterhouses in the nation to participate in the government's voluntary mad cow testing program.

From 2001 to 2003, brain matter test samples were taken at fewer than 100 of the nation's 700 slaughterhouses, United Press International reported last month. Vern's, like most of the slaughterhouses that participated in testing, is a small operation. It got $10 per sample for taking part in the program.

Vern's tended to specialize in marginal cows and steers, Louthan said, such as old dairy cows and sick steers from feedlots.

Louthan worked at Vern's more than four years, killing about 20 cows a day before he was laid off in early January. He said he saw and participated in practices that now make him afraid to eat beef.

Louthan's main points, all disputed by federal agriculture officials, are these:

The dairy cow killed on Dec. 9 that later tested positive for mad cow disease was not a ''downer," Louthan said, but was on its feet when he killed it with a bolt to the brain in the back of a trailer so it wouldn't trample other cows that were down in the same trailer.

The Agriculture Department's mad cow testing program, which focuses on downer cattle, is inadequate to protect the public from disease.

Common slaughterhouse practices can contaminate muscle meat with spinal cord material and, possibly, disease-causing prions.

Louthan said he remembers the cow because it was from the Sunny Dene Ranch in Mabton, Wash., and because of its sequence on his ''kill sheet," a record he kept for Vern's.

The cow was tested on a fluke, he said. If it had walked up a ramp into the slaughterhouse, it wouldn't have been tested. Because he killed it outdoors, it was. Vern's had an agreement with the USDA to test all animals that were killed outdoors and didn't walk up the ramp into the slaughterhouse, Louthan said.

The USDA has consistently denied Louthan's version of events.

''He's mistaken about the status of that cow. What he said is just erroneous," said Steven Cohen, a spokesman for the USDA's food safety inspection service. ''There's no doubt the animal that tested positive was non-ambulatory."

Cohen faxed a copy of the USDA inspector's report, which said the Holstein with tag number M2229095 was ''sternal, alert," meaning down on its chest.

Whether more testing would turn up more disease is debatable. Tests have come back negative from the 255 Mabton animals that have been killed as part of a USDA investigation since the Holstein tested positive for mad cow disease.

The USDA maintains that the nation's beef supply is safe.

On Jan. 4, something drove Louthan to send e-mails to all the USDA inspectors he could find on the government's Web site.

''People have eaten the bad meat and they are going to die," he wrote.

The next day, he said, he was laid off from his job at Vern's.

On Jan. 15, the Columbia Basin Herald published a letter by Louthan with the headline: ''Is the beef safe? Who knows?"

The letter was picked up by numerous Web sites. Reporters tracked him down and told his story. The echo chamber of the national news media reverberated with Louthan's personal doubts about the meat industry.

At this point, it doesn't matter anymore whether the cow Louthan remembers standing in the trailer was the one that tested positive for mad cow disease. One man with a stain on his jacket and a hole in the knee of his jeans raised a ruckus heard around the nation. And around the world.

On Tuesday, Louthan did an interview in front of Vern's with another Japanese news crew. The crew planned to air its story in Japan today.