Mad-cow scrutiny is scaled way back

By Sandi Doughton

Seattle Times staff reporter

While Washington ranchers are raising a fuss over Canadian cattle and the danger of mad-cow disease, the region's only mad-cow testing lab is quietly preparing to close March 1.

The lab at Washington State University in Pullman opened after the nation's first mad-cow case spurred a flurry of new safeguards against the fatal, brain-wasting disease.

But three years later, many of those measures are being dismantled. Others proposed after the infected dairy cow was