Local company developing minute test for detecting CWD, mad cow disease

By Adam Kirby of the Daily Times staff
Wednesday, January 21, 2004 2:47 PM CST

TSE Scan marketing director Zachery Meyer demonstrates the infrared spectrometer. (John Hart/Daily Times)

Donald Meyer desperately wants to get his hands on some mad cow disease-tainted meat.

Meyer, president of Watertown-based TSE Scan, is trying to acquire some tissue samples of the diseased cattle to further his company's development of a 1-minute test for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.

Meyer has been meeting with politicians, including Sen. Russ Feingold, to secure the political connections needed to get the mad cow meat for testing. A TSE Scan delegation is headed to London next month, where several agencies and private labs have mad cow samples.

If Meyer's voyage is successful in accessing mad cow samples, it could be a big step toward securing the nation's beef supply.

Zachery Meyer, marketing director for TSE Scan, envisions an America where every steak and every hamburger is confirmed mad cow-free before ever leaving the slaughterhouse.

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Currently, mad cow tests take between five hours and 10 days, meaning that testing of all cattle is logistically prohibitive. TSE Scan's test, which the company hopes to have on the market by the end of this year, could theoretically test 1,000 pounds of beef in just over one minute, with a cost of $10 per test.

"If we tested every one of the cattle, you're talking about raising the price of beef by 1 cent" per pound, Zachery Meyer said.

A 1-minute test could improve cattle farmers' profit margins as well. Meat from the 6 percent of cattle herds that are considered "downer," or unable to walk, was recently banned from the market by the U.S. Department of Agriculture due to mad cow concerns. Trouble walking is a primary symptom of the disease, though the vast majority of downer cattle are mad cow-free.

"With a test like this, we could get these downer cattle through," Zachery Meyer said.

The 1-minute mad cow test is by no means a done deal, but the Meyers believe it is only a matter of time and resources.

"We're really confident in going to England," Zachery Meyer said. "There's enough evidence to suggest that it would work."

TSE Scan's mad cow test is actually a spin-off of its chronic wasting disease test, which has been relatively successful in two years of developmental use by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Mad cow disease and CWD in white-tail deer - along with scrapie, a disease in sheep that TSE Scan also tests for - are fundamentally similar in nature.

The tests work by placing an animal's lymph node on a metal disc called an infrared spectrometer, which scans the tissue's molecular makeup. A computer program then compares the results against a data bank of past tests.

The program learns the difference between clean and tainted meat using samples tested in a laboratory setting to create a calibrated data bank. Then, each subsequent test improves the data's reliability.

TSE Scan's 1-minute CWD test recently underwent scrutiny at the USDA's headquarters in Washington state - with flawless results, Zachery Meyer said.

The company expects to have its CWD test government-certified in time for the next deer hunting season. Eventually, hunters could have their kill tested at DNR sites throughout the state, with immediate results.