WASHINGTON (AP) – The government has begun a criminal investigation into whether records may have been falsified in the nation’s first and only case of mad cow disease, the Agriculture Department’s inspector general said Wednesday.

In a separate investigation, the General Accounting Office is checking the feed industry’s compliance with a Food and Drug Administration’s rule aimed at keeping the infectious protein blamed for the disease out of cattle feed.

The criminal probe is moving alongside a non-criminal review of the Agriculture Department’s response to the mad cow case, the department’s inspector general, Phyllis Fong, told a House subcommittee.

Fong said the criminal investigation focuses on whether the infected Holstein cow truly was a “downer” animal unable to stand or walk when it was slaughtered Dec. 9 in Moses Lake, Wash.

The department initially said the cow was a downer, and that was why it was tested for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. Downers have a higher risk of the brain-wasting disease.

But men who saw the cow at Vern’s Moses Lake Meat Co. just before it was slaughtered recall it being on its feet. One of the plant’s owners, Tom Ellestad, said the cow got up after the inspecting veterinarian had seen it lying down and had classified it as a downer. Department officials conceded last month that the cow might have gotten back up.

The investigation is in its first weeks, with officials gathering documents and interviewing witnesses, Fong told the House Appropriations Committee’s agriculture subcommittee. She would not talk about possible targets in the investigation nor specify who is being interviewed.

“We haven’t determined anything so far,” she said.

Ellestad could not immediately be reached. His wife, Marla, said officials have been visiting the slaughterhouse constantly and asking questions since the mad cow case surfaced.

“There have been too many different people (and) they don’t tell me anything,” she said, adding that she has no knowledge of any criminal investigation or falsification of papers.

The GAO, a watchdog agency for Congress, is checking FDA’s claims of near-total compliance with a ban aimed at keeping the protein that causes mad cow from being transmitted through animal feed, said Larry Dyckman, who is heading the congressional investigation.

The GAO auditors also are looking at how the FDA and Agriculture Department have handled meat recalls, including the one triggered by the mad cow case, Dyckman said. But he said they were not looking into the downer issue

The recall in the mad cow case eventually grew to 38,000 pounds of hamburger that could have been mixed with meat from infected Holstein as it moved through packinghouses and wholesalers to grocery stores and restaurants in six Western states.

AP-ES-03-03-04 1634EST