bushgang says no to Mad Cow Testing by beef company

[donsu]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-03-25-our-view-usat_x.htm

Beef firm faces perplexing resistance to mad cow tests


Creekstone Farms Premium Beef is a small producer of high-quality beef in Kansas. But it's making a big point about mad cow disease. It wants to privately test all of the cattle it slaughters for the illness, which can cause a fatal brain disease in humans who eat infected meat. The way Creekstone Farms sees it, 100% testing would reassure U.S customers. The company also says it is talking with Japan about restarting exports there, where total testing is required.

-snip-

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) currently does not allow such private testing for mad cow disease. And it claims that a new government testing system it approved this month is perfectly adequate. More than 10 times the number of cattle will be tested for mad cow under the new system, but the government still will be testing less than 1% of the 37 million cattle slaughtered in the U.S. each year. That falls far short of the 100% testing Creekstone Farms is proposing and Japan provides.

Other beef producers complain that Creekstone Farms' 100% testing plans would set an expensive precedent. They worry that consumers might be misled into thinking an untested cut of beef isn't safe. But food producers ranging from organic growers to free-range farmers already market their products based on the idea that food produced in healthier ways or with added safeguards is worth paying for. Creekstone Farms' proposal taps into the same logic.

-snip-

Scientists are developing promising, inexpensive mad cow tests, including a simple blood test. Until they are perfected, letting Creekstone Farms carry out full testing under USDA oversight not only seems reasonable, it also could provide an important measure of the usefulness of 100% testing.
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in yrs. to come, if you or yours get Mad Cow you know who to blame and sue: the bushgang and big Beef corps.

[eyesroll]

1. I thought the Republicans liked free-market solutions

Isn't this a free-market solution? Letting the free market determine whether they want beef that's been 100% tested?

Oh. Wait.

[tom_paine]

2. No, the Free Market wants to sell cheap, contaminated beef

This would stand in opposition to that goal.

[mmm]

3. It would only cost six cents a pound to test all the beef!

Who would not pay six cents a pound extra?
Something ain't right.

[tom_paine]

4. But how much more would it cost if they found ramapant Mad Cow

in the beef?

Cost-benefiot analysis: REJECTED

Lives lost...acceptable because it's just Filthy Little Nobodies.

You gotta think like a Bushevik Monster on these issues, distasteful as it is.

I need a shower.

[mmm]

9. If the USDA dictated that all beef must be tested

it would force meat producers to clean up the industry.
It's gotta be done sooner or later. The long term cost
of Mad Cow proliferation will be astronomical.
Perhaps new players would appear, offering safe meat
for an additional ten cents a pound.
I think this is an instance where the forces of
supply and demand would stabilize the market price
while enhancing the quality. It works sometimes.

[tom_paine]

10. I haven't eaten beef since this came out

and I have no intention of resuming so. It's a shame because I am a serious meat-eater, but I'll get by.

I wouldn't trust a Bushevik Organization (including the ones under their Tyrannical Bootheel in the Former US Government) if it told me water was wet.

Bushevik USDA is now the moral equivalent of the Soviet Department of Agriculutre. There may be a few honest people left there, but I have no doubt they have already been marked for personal and career destruction by the Bushevik Loyalists.

[treepig]

5. self-testing is not the answer

look what happened when enron audited itself.

and what about halliburton - i think we'd all agree a bit of oversight is in order there.

i'm sure this particular company has good intentions, but when all the huge agricultural corporations (of the ilk of monsanto, ADM) start testing programs of their own - just who's going to trust the veracity of these tests?

of course it's outrageous that the usda doesn't have a testing program in place - but that's a somewhat peripheral issue

[Media_Lies_Daily]

7. The USDA not having a test plan in place is a "peripheral issue"???...

Not if you get CJD, the human equivalent of "mad cow".

[treepig]

8. it's peripheral to the point i was making

which is that corporations cannot, and should not, be allowed to police themselves.

[Triple H]

6. Can you put a price on human safety?

No, you cannot. I guess the Dubya Misadministration doesn't really care about our safety, right? Thanks again for looking out for us, GWB. You really show us all you care. :eyes: