SAN FRANCISCOFive months after Humane Farming Association investigator Gail Eisenitz disclosed through the December 1994 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE a year-long series of USDA, U.S. Customs Service, and Food and Drug Administration raids on veal industry facilities in at least five states, seeking an illegal livestock growth stimulant called clenbuterol, related scandals continue to surface.
Hard to detect, until the recent development of a test that finds traces in a slaughtered animal's retinas, clenbuterol residues in meat can be lethal to humans.
Among the newly revealed cases:
€ Clenbuterol was found in a blackfaced lamb exhibited by Brian Wade Johnson, 22, of Gotebo, Oklahoma, who was named the Future Farmer Association's American Star Farmer of 1994 even as ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press with Eisenitz's findings. The lamb was Grand Champion at the North American International Livestock Expo, held last November in Louisville, Kentucky.
€ Two other winning entrants at that fair tested positive for clenbuterol, including the reserve champion steer exhibited by Hilary Wise, 17, of Brownwood, Texas. Wise, who had the grand champion steer at the American Royal fair in Kansas City in 1993, had a steer disqualified at the Royal this year because the animal's leg had been cosmetically improved with twine, glue, and paint.
€ 15 people, including five professional livestock exhibition groomers, have now been indicted, and nine to date convicted, in connection with clenbuterol-related tampering at the Ohio state fair last August.
€ Clenbuterol was found in six of the 38 animals tested after the Tulsa State Fair last September.
€ Clenbuterol was found in a champion hog at the American Royal exhibition in Kansas City last November.
€ Clenbuterol was found in both the top steers at the National Western Stock Show in Denver in March, including one exhibted by Ryan Rush, 16, of Crockett, Texas whose mother, Cherie Carraba, publishes a livestock show magazine and had editorialized in favor of drug testing at stock shows. She and her husband admitted responsibility.
€ John P. Murray, DVM, 48, of Oxbox, Saskatchewan, was arrested at Northgate, North Dakota, and arraigned on March 30 for alleged clenbuterol trafficking. "We see him as a major supplier of the stature of Dr. Thomas," an investigator told Hendricks of The Kansas City Star, referring to Charles Thomas, DVM, of Fort Dodge, Iowa. Thomas was recently convicted of selling at least $60,000 worth of clenbuterol over the past three years in four Midwestern states. The alleged source of some of the clenbuterol found in the Ohio and Denver fair cases, Thomas was training to become a federal meat inspector.
Murray's arrest came one day after Brad Miller, national director of HFA, asked U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to make clenbuterol abuse by the veal industry an investigative priority, pointing out that although the FDA learned in 1989 that the drug was used by Vitek, a major veal formula supplier, action against Vitek didn't begin until 1984. Meanwhile, use spread to other firms. Even after the federal crackdown began, as ANIMAL PEOPLE detailed in December, investigating agents cooperated with the American Veal Association to keep use by vealers out of the headlines.
Clenbuterol use is also under investigation abroad. Belgian police and pharmaceutical inspectors on March 10 raided 82 Flanders veterinary facilities in search of clenbuterol and other illegal livestock drugs. The raids followed the February 20 murder of animal health inspector Karel Van Noppen, who was probing the "hormone mafia." On March 16 the European Parliament asked the European Union to more closely regulate livestock drugs, via import controls, compulsory registration of possession and use, restriction of use to approved veterinarians, formation of an international data base to assist in related law enforcement, and establishment of stiff penalties for violations. The same sources involved in the Belgian traffic are believed to be the major suppliers to the U.S.
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