government so what should we take away from this latest brush with mad cow disease joining me now is dr michael hansen senior staff scientist with the consumers union dr hansen welcome glad to be with you tom thank you for joining us from our offices in new york i believe your officials are saying that this latest case of mad cow is just a quote isolated incident and quote do you both believe this is an isolated incident or do you think that it's the start of an outbreak of mad cow disease. well i don't think this is an isolated incident because as you said they were randomly checking cattle and the reason some people say this is good because it didn't get into the food supply well the fact of the matter is they were only testing dead so this was a dead cow that was taken to a rendering plant it was an exhibit any symptoms that it was simply a dead cow and i understand there was twenty or thirty other cows that came in that were dead from this facility and the random testing caught it so if they buy they test forty thousand cows a year we slaughter. thirty four to thirty five million this represents p