WASHINGTON: The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep
meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.
The Agriculture Department tests fewer than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. A beef producer in the western state of Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wants to test all
of its cows.
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Free market Republicans at their best.
Someone is willing to build a better mouse trap or in this case certify that their beef is mad cow disease free and Republicans feel it will cost big business too much $$ to make their product safer too. If some company wants to pay to have it's beef certified disease free and consumer are willing to pay more for it (isn't that free market) why should Bush stand in their way?
...but I'd place blame on the administration, the Agricultural dept. and all the reps/sen. from the cattle producing states...I'm sure they're all getting pressure from the rest of the meat industry - as the article says.
This is ridiculous...but what do you expect when government caters to 'special interests' (on both sides of the aisle)? In this case, I can see no reason, other than the desires of the meat industry, for the government to even be interested in this issue.
The decision of the government to get involved doesn't represent the core values of the Republican Party.
illegal for a rancher to test for mad cow in their own herd.
Here's a link from a discussion page I found in a search.http://www.newstarget.com/011661.html
There was a story about two years ago, I thought it was 20/20 but I can't find it. If anyone else can find it - about a rancher who was trying to test his herd and went national with the USDA's reaction.
SensorG, the free market response would be "you shouldn't eat poisoned meat in the first place."
http://nookularoption.blogspot.com/
Tell that to Scruffy
http://nookularoption.blogspot.com/
Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, form Kansas you say; I wonder who carries their products locally? ? ?
How many frozen buritos and hot pockets are tested for funk?
How about Chinese Food at empty establishments and fast food restaurant chili? Don't get me started on hot dogs at 7-11 on the rollers or Taco Bell Meat!
I guess if I survived this and all the school lunches, I'm going to be immune to Mad Cow, SARS, West Nile, TB, the lack of Bees, global warming, and Paris going to jail.
I eat 79 year old Twinkies for Breakfest, and Twice on Sundays!
I just came across this thread, and had a chuckle because of the outrage.
This a cost-benefit analysis that the government makes all the time. To date there have been no human cases of mad-cow disease in the US. (To put it another way we've had the same number of human mad cow disease cases as WMDs we've found in Iraq). Also, the technique used to determine whether a cow has this disease or not is pretty time-intensive and would be expensive to do. I actually use this same technique all the time in the lab I work in. To test every cow in the US would literally cost hundreds of millions of dollars. And there wouldn't be any benefit really. Nobody is getting the disease anyway, so why would we start testing for it?
Mad cow disease isn't a bacteria or a virus or any other living organism. As such, the innoculation dose is pretty high for this disease and must occur over multiple exposures, so the random cow that might have mad cow disease and gets into the food supply won't cause an sudden jump in the human form of the disease.
E. coli infected meat causes infinitely more deaths in the US than mad cow has ever caused, yet we don't test every piece of meat for E. coli infection. People are getting worked up about nothing in my opinion.
"The decision of the government to get involved doesn't represent the core values of the Republican Party"
--Can you clarify this? Do you mean the decision of the gov't (FDA) to get involved by testing does not represent Repub values? Or that the decision of the current administration to get involved, by not wanting to test....does not represent Repub values? A little confused....
http://nookularoption.blogspot.com/
I'm assuming you're joking, but the ACTUAL freemarket response would be "He who sells poisoned meat does not stay in business long" and therefore a business should be pretty certain that whatever they're selling is at the very least not lethal to its customers.
...with the government making a decision not to inspect for this particular disease...but I do have a problem when it looks like the government's going to step in and tell a company that they CAN'T inspect...What does the government care if some company wants to go such expense?
...core GOP value - the less government involvement in our daily lives, the better...
On the one hand, I was referring solely to the decision to try and stop an entity from performing a test and then advertising it. Why should government care if some meat packer wants to test his beef and then advertise that he's done so?
In this case, it appears that the 'powers that be' (and I'm sure it includes the white house and congress) are fighting a battle on behalf of the rest of the meat industry who fears the competition such a claim would bring. The rest of the meat industry, according to the article, has a fear that if one producer starts testing and advertising, they'll all have to do so, in order to compete. For government to step into the middle of this isn't reflective of the core Republican values.
As for the second question - for the FDA to be responsible for testing...I hadn't thought about it. I will and get back to you...