U.S. Sees No Need to Test All Cattle

[DuctapeFatwa]

The Bush administration said on Wednesday there was no need to test all U.S. cattle for mad cow disease because its new safeguards should satisfy American consumers and trading partners that U.S. beef is safe to eat.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=4062787

[porkrind]

1. Whew!! I guess I can relax now ...

That the Bush administration is on the case. (not) :eyes:

[mouse7]

2. Then Mouse sees no need to eat beef.

This isn't about mad cow. This is about the "yuck factor."

Do you wanna eat Strawberry Yogurt and Guiness Stout?

No. Why? It's... like... yuck.

Exactly.

Until they test all the beef, beef just seems... yuck.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Yeah sure, next we will see the Commander in Thief

eating a cheese burger and telling us, "see Murica...beef is safe. I eat it. What 'bout you? Do yer patriotic duty and eat beef and shop till you drop... those of you who refuse, we'll smoke you out and have at you... bring it on!"

[MoonRiver]

4. Make sure to have that burger tested,

cause I betcha it'll be a veggie. Junior doesn't mess around with his precious little bod.

[Indiana_Dem]

9. Yeah i bet Bush

has his meat made specially from organically fed cattle because he probably knows better!! lol

[LibertyorDeath]

5. "U.S. beef is safe to eat" HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!

[LibertyorDeath]

6. I'm Mad as a Cow and I'm not going to take it anymore!

http://www.mad-cow.org/

http://viswiz.imk.fraunhofer.de/~steffi/madcow/madcow.htm

[Cocoa]

7. the Bush administration is incapable of handling this kind of thing

their only concern is special interests, they have no interest in the public's good. Only luck will keep this from becoming a disaster.

[NYC]

8. What a reassuring paragraph that was.

I'm not even going to read the article. I'm on a Mad Cow boycott, and that includes bread and everything else that contains cow products. Mad Cow seems to be the least of my worries concerning beef. (So far, surviving on imported food.)

[moondust]

10. Equivalent to spot checking trucks entering Baghdad airport.

It only takes one bad one to kill a bunch of people.


(Reminder: All they care about is money.)

[Andyjunction]

11. Don't you have to kill the cow to test?

I thought the only way to test for mad cow was to take a brain sample which can't be done without killing the cow. If that's true it wouldn't really be possible to test all cows. Maybe I'm thinking of something else though.

Either way I've found a new love for poultry and fish lately.

[NYC]

12. Japan tests every cow.

People have to be dead to be tested; I don't know about cows.

[ramapo]

40. What a difference. What about E-coli?

Here in the US nothing happens until people start to drop dead. After all the mighty profit must be protected. Why waste money on testing?

Japan shows what a responsible society does. Testing every cow makes sense. Wonder if they test for E-coli also. After all that kills a fair number of people

[htuttle]

13. There is a new test in the works

Heard about it on Democracy Now yesterday. It is done on a reasonably small quantity of blood, so it can be done on a regular basis while the animal is still alive.

It's gonna cost something, though, so I'm sure the cattle industry will fight it.

[WhereIsMyFreedom]

14. I believe that they collect their samples

at slaughter time. They also have tests that return results in days instead of weeks (like ours). It's more of a warning system than a prevention mechanism.

[papau]

15. I believe you are correct - 24 hr turnaround at a cost of 2-3 cts per lb.

The EU test about 25% of its beef - the US will annually take about 170,000 downers of the food chain - just like the rest of the world does to cows that can not walk - and increase our testing from 25000 to 38000 this year - which is less than 1%.

[Kellanved]

33. most EU nations test all Beef from cattle older than 24 months

A test for live cattle might be introduced soon.

I wonder if the fact that most tests are from EU companies is the reason behind the decision to limit the testing.

[KG]

16. eat more chikin

[54anickel]

18. Better not be TYSON!

[54anickel]

17. Oh, Pul-leeeez. I wasn't even going to read the article, but I made the

mistake of diving in. This is such crap!

...there was no need to test all U.S. cattle for mad cow disease because its new safeguards should satisfy American consumers...

What safeguards? All I've seen so far in no downed cattle will be processed.

"We had a single find of BSE (mad cow) in this country and we believe that what we're doing is appropriate action taken in an abundance of caution under the circumstances," Veneman said on NBC-TV's "Today Show."

Didn't I just read some where there were as many as 81 suspected. And this single cow effected how many pounds of ground beef shipped to how many areas?

Veneman used her power under an animal health law to immediately ban downer cattle from the food supply. The animals, believed to number about 200,000 out of a total annual slaughter of nearly 36 million, still can be used in making pet food and other products not intended for human consumption.

From what I understand, the current testing is a monitoring program, finds the meat is tainted AFTER the fact - oh great that's helpful.
The test that I read about from the Nobel prize winner on the subject would add a couple of cents per pound!

I am so pissed about this I could scream. Then to top it off, I see this article today about that idiot John Tyson, getting his pay DOUBLED last year to 20.9 MILLION. Treats the workers like shit, hired illegals for slaughter houses and gets it dismissed by using the OTHER law stating questioning a persons "papers" is a form of discrimination. Never mind that they had multiples of the same SS number and name.

http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2004/01/01/tyson_chiefs_pay_more_than_doubles/

While I am on the topic of John Tyson, check out another article today about the total disregard for corporate responsibility.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/apbiz_story.asp?category=1310&slug=Tyson%20Foods%20Chairman

I was a farm kid and I totally despise what the corporate farm has done to this industry.

[aquart]

23. If every CEO took ten million dollars less per annum

there would be no need for outsourcing.

CEO greed is killing our people and destroying our industrial capability.

[san antonio]

26. You really don't know what your talking about do you?

What safeguards? All I've seen so far in no downed cattle will be processed.

You honestly don't have the slightest clue how that will help?

[jayfish]

29. Well I sure Don't. Why Don't You Help All Of Us...

dumb asses out. To preface your explanation lets just admit that just because a cow is a downer doesn't mean it has BSE and just because it can use it's own power to walk to it's death doesn't mean it is not infected with BSE. The banning of downer cattle is a psychological, feel good, measure.

Jay

[NickB79]

34. Latency period of years for BSE

A cow can be infected for years without showing symptoms. If it happens to be slaughtered before the symptoms become apparent, like most beef cattle are, the wonderful "no downer cows" safeguard fails. One of those cows can then contaminate thousands of pounds of beef and expose hundreds of people to BSE. Downer cows usually occur in dairy cows that are 4+ years old, given plenty of time to develop symptoms. However, dairy cows make up the minority of cattle; most cattle in the US are beef cattle. Beef cattle don't live much beyond 2-3 yrs before they're slaughtered, though.

Now do you have a clue how this will NOT help?

[dansolo]

37. Isn't the incubation period years?

That alone should tell you that any new safeguards, even if they were 100% effective, wouldn't do anything for the cows that may already be infected.

[salin]

19. If this is driven by the industry itself, then they are fools.

Japan - who dealt with a scare a few years ago - did a huge pr effort based on real policies/actions that ensured the safety of the meat. Japan is a huge importer. Japan has refused to lift its ban on US beef. Why would they lift it to allow beef that would recreate their own scare in? I would guess that unless the measures/level of testing here mirrors the efforts within the importing country's current safety measures once MadCow has been found within the region, that they won't import the beef.

Didn't I read that the cattle industry exports a significant portion of their beef?

So get BUsh to "reassure" the us public, while keeping serious new 'regulation' *play evil creepy music at each intonation of the word* at bay (to keep costs down)... but don't do what is necessary to assure confidence abroad so that foreign markets for beef dry up... or somehow have the delusion that bush will muscle those countries into continuing to import the beef???? Insane and foolish.

[san antonio]

20. How many of you...

...have ever stepped foot on a cattle operation? Performing a BSE test on every single animal that is sent to the packer would be like doing an on the spot background check (contacting references, doing long interviews, and the whole 9-yards) for every passenger on an aircraft.

It's like some people here are looking forward to putting a bunch of mom and pop farmers out of business. No, cattle aren't bred the same way swine and chickens are. Cattle are bred and raised to weaning by small operations, not the four big packers you guys hate so much. It really scares me how eager some people here are to see those people go bust.

[Le Taz Hot]

25. Then "mom and pop"

should stop feeding their livestock diseased dead animals. And if they do not engage in such practices, what a great PR opportunity for them.

By the way, most cattle comes from HUGE agribusiness, not mom & pops.

[san antonio]

27. More lies..

should stop feeding their livestock diseased dead animals. And if they do not engage in such practices, what a great PR opportunity for them.

That has been illegal for a few years now in a direct effort to prevent BSE. If you don't know what you're talking about and base your facts on slander by special interest groups, please don't pass on false information.

Edit: it ws 1997 that the ban took effect.

[cliss]

32. I was about to post at the end, but...

I'm going to comment on the ban on "cannibal pellets". I think we can all agree on this thread that the practice of feeding cows animal protein from other slaughtered cows is the REAL reason why we found 1 cow in Moses Lake with Mad Cow disease.

After the problems in the UK with mad cow disease, the practice of feeding cannibal pellets was banned in August 1997.

This means that you can't feed your cows meat pellets and they are now banned, right? Not at all. Ranchers still use them. Investigators are eventually going to find that the Moses Lake cow ate meat.

The ban means that they tried to ban the practice, but it still continues. There are no laws against it, and no one will be put out of business if they continue to use it.

To prove it, I'm going to call or go down to visit the local feed store. I'm going to ask if they carry cannibal pellets.

[NickB79]

38. The loopholes are many

The 1997 "ban", as already pointed out, is not enforced to any significant degree in the US. It also still allows one to feed cattle remains in the feed to other livestock, such as pigs and sheep. There is some evidence that BSE may be transmissible to pigs. So, you feed contaminated feed to pigs, they become infected, and then you can grind the pig parts up and feed them back to cattle! The ban states you can't feed cattle back to cattle. It doesn't ban the remains from other species, such as pigs and sheep, to be used in cattle feed. It simply widens the loop, instead of breaking it.

[Bridget Burke]

28. If you do the test, you can charge more for the meat.

I'm not so pure when I eat out. But for some time, I've only been buying beef that's a "cut above" the general grocery store roadkill.

As far as ground beef goes, I'll grind it myself. Mad Cow Disease is a real if distant fear but a recent episode of food poisoning convinced me.

If "Mom & Pop" want to stay in business they need to get smart. In fact, some of them probably are. As a Texan, I don't think we're all idiots. Hey, even Aggies can figure out how to deal with the modern world.

[54anickel]

30. Yep, been on a big one in AZ, have a small mom & pop angus farm less than

a quarter mile down the road from my house. There is a SIMPLE blood test that can be used to test animals destined for slaughter.

No one wants to see any farms go under, but when profit is put ahead of public safety, I have a problem with that.

Don't know what 4 big packers you are talking about, Yes I mentioned Tyson by name. Research them sometime. And IF they ARE representative of this industry, I say we have a huge problem, period.

[NickB79]

36. I grew up on a cattle/dairy farm

And I can tell you that the BIG thing pushing mom-and-pop farms out of the way are corporately-owned factory farms with massive feedlots of cattle and pigs. A testing requirement will be the least of their worries. If the new blood tests for BSE become available soon and don't cost an arm and a leg, it should be no problem for any small family farms to test their small herds without much expense. It would be more cost-prohibitive for the factory farms, where thousands of animals would have to be tested at a time.

[midnight armadillo]

41. Japan does

I've read recently that Japan tests all its beef.

The result would be higher beef prices and perhaps lower demand.

[aquart]

21. "Should" satisfy. And if it doesn't?

What flaming bloody gall.

[Le Taz Hot]

22. And I see no need

to eat anymore beef. Don't eat much anyway and haven't for the last 30 years so cutting it completely out of my diet will be simple.

Btw, I don't bother to watch TV "news" anymore, does anyone know if this is getting ANY coverage? Last I heard it was all Michael Jackson/all the time.

[san antonio]

24. What?

Btw, I don't bother to watch TV "news" anymore, does anyone know if this is getting ANY coverage?

This issue is very close to my pocket book and the pocket book of my family and this IS getting TONS of new coverage considering how many cattle have been infected. In fact, I haven't seen one 30-minute broadcast on Fox, CNN, or ABC (both national and local) that didn't bring this up.

[goforit]

31. What is he doing?????...................................

:argh:

[mbperrin]

35. Okay, so no need to test all schoolkids either, right?

nt

[MikeG]

39. Nothing to see here. Move along.

MOO!! HEE!! HEE!! BWAHAHA!!!
MOO!! HEE!! HEE!! BWAHAHA!!!
MOO!! HEE!! HEE!! BWAHAHA!!!
MOO!! HEE!! HEE!! BWAHAHA!!!