Administration fighting mad cow testing.
By on May 30th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Administration fighting mad cow testing.
“The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Arkansas City-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows.
Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too.
View Most Popular
Advertisement
What We're About
What We're Fighting For
What We're Fighting Against
Featured
Subscribe to the Progress Report
Topic CloudView topics sorted by popularity
Afghanistan
Bachmann
Beck
Boehner
Business
Cheney
Civil Rights
Congress
Corporate Ethics
Dobbs
Economy
Education
Election
Energy
Environment
Ethics
Fox News
Gingrich
Glenn Beck
Global Warming
Health Care
Immigration
International Relations
Justice
LGBT
Lieberman
Limbaugh
Media
Military
O'Reilly
Obama
Palin
Pelosi
Politics
Race
Radical Right
Religion
Sports
Steele
Stimulus
Tea Parties
Tea Party
Terrorism
Veterans
Women's Rights
Visit Our Affiliated Sites
Reports
In-depth studies on select topics
Got a hot tip?
Have a hot news tip? We'd love to hear from you. Use the form below to send us the latest.
ArchivesBlog Roll
Bush Administration’s Mad Cow policy – ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ or ‘government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations…’
May 30th, 2007 at 2:57 pmWhat! Bush has mad cow disease??? Who knew!!!
May 30th, 2007 at 2:59 pmThe administration should at least agree to test ‘Shane’ for being a potential lunatic on this commentary board.
May 30th, 2007 at 2:59 pmWhat is the issue? Companies and profits are more important than what might happen to people. Everyone knows that.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:00 pmSO glad i’m vegetarian!!!
May 30th, 2007 at 3:03 pmThat doesn’t even make sense. Bush is such a f’in idiot.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:04 pmThere’s a foreign trade element to this that should not go without comment. The US cannot get Japan and other countries to relax their minimum standards for meat imports to the extent individual US exporters voluntarily submit to the higher international standards.
So the US is essentially telling the world that it will either get potentially tainted beef, or no beef at all.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:05 pmPatrick1,
perhaps Bush will give these mad cows amnesty too.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:05 pmI thought the President’s top priority was to protect the American People? At least that’s what he keeps saying.
I get it. His priority is not to protect us from corporations that would do anything to maximize profit!!
May 30th, 2007 at 3:05 pmThe administration should at least agree to test ‘Shane’ for being a potential lunatic on this commentary board. Comment by CompTROLLER V-1 — May 30, 2007 @ 2:59 pm
Says the “mad-cow”….
May 30th, 2007 at 3:07 pmThe question that this administration asks themselves before making any decision:
May 30th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Am I reading this correctly? Creekstone wants to voluntarily self-regulate and the Republican government is trying to stop them? Creekstone might get a leg up on the mega meatpackers by doing the right thing and we can’t have that.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:13 pmYou may recall Clinton’s troubles with the Texas beef producers. One slaughterhouse was producing substandard product, but there’s no power of recall on beef. The law merely reports that the process has been inspected –no comment on what the results of the inspection were. Clinton had the federal inspector removed, which effectively shut down the slaughterhouse, but the meatpacker went to court and the court said Clinton couldn’t withhold inspections –even if they were meaningless inspections– because the law required the meat to be “inspected” or it couldn’t be sold.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:13 pmSomeone clue me in if I am wrong… but doesn’t it appear Bush is trying to kill off as many as he can and ruin as many social programs as he can while robbing the treasury for himself and his buddies?
May 30th, 2007 at 3:14 pmRepublicans hate free markets and small business.
I want to know which Democrat is going to lead the way on this. And how it’s going to happen.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:18 pmIt’s a return to the Golden -er- Gilded Age of the Robber Barons. Where’s Upton Sinclair when you need him?
May 30th, 2007 at 3:18 pmhad enough,
You are right. He’s not concerned with the safety and general welfare of the American people. He’s only concerned with the safety of the American Corporation.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:19 pmIt’s not like beef’s unsafe. After all, there hasn’t been a beef recall in over 7 whole days!
May 30th, 2007 at 3:27 pmhttp://www.gourmetretailer.com/gourmetretailer/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003585262
yeah, I would NEVER even CONSIDER paying extra for meat that I knew did not have mad cow disease
May 30th, 2007 at 3:28 pmFor all of the money we are wasting in Iraq, we could provide adequate funding for many, many important things: Safe food, for instance. Man, what a waste of money and lives.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:31 pmIf we mandate an extremely expensive test on every single cow, we the consumer are the ones that pay when the price of beef goes even higher. We the consumer have to decide how much more we want to pay I guess. TP seems to be of the opinion we should be paying more for beef. You realize that our schools and the working poor also will have to pay up. Seems like a bad choice right now since mad cow is not prevelant.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:32 pmElites like the Bush dynasty do not have to worry about where their food comes from. They only dine on the best of everything.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:32 pmAfraid to test? Because the USDA would have to stop blaming Canadian farmers. That excuse is about to run its course.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:37 pmRoger_Rhetoric sez:
Straw man, RR. The test isn’t being mandated. Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows on a purely voluntary basis, and isn’t advocating mandating the test for all competitors.
It looks like Creekstone Farms Premium Beef has found a niche in the free market it wants to exploit…certified mad-cow disease-free beef. Funny how this administration, which is supposed to be all about the Free Market, wants to prevent a company from voluntarily holding itself to a higher standard…
May 30th, 2007 at 3:38 pm#21. Creekstone Farms would bear the cost of the tests and pass that cost on to its own consumers. Other consumers could continue to buy less expensive beef as they do today. Any problem with that, since that is what the Bush Administration is preventing?
May 30th, 2007 at 3:40 pm“The Agriculture Department regulates the test and argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry.”
Through The Looking Glass, starring the Bush administration.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:40 pm- love meat packers, just hope I never got any bad meat in the can
May 30th, 2007 at 3:40 pmSo Roger Roger thinks we should “Save a Buck”, versus having vast number of Americans contract a deadly and *EXPENSIVE* disease…
And his *logic* is based on the disease *not* being widespread – a conclusion reached by *NOT* testing? BAHAHAHA, now that’s the HEIGHT of ST*PIDITY!!!
May 30th, 2007 at 3:41 pm#21..Roger Roger, I agree 100%. Some innocent children/adults should have to die first, like in the Tylenol scare, before we create safety measures.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:41 pmRoger_Roger that is exactly correct and my point from above. First and prime priority is corporations and healthy margins. People are secondary.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:41 pmRoger_Roger added, “Oh no! My straw man! My precious, precious straw man argument!”
May 30th, 2007 at 3:42 pm#2 David:
Bush has Mad Cowboy disease.
#21 Roger_Roger
I think that the point of this post is that the Bush administration isn’t even willing to let the marketplace decide whether consumers want to pay more for safety — which is usually the argument advanced by them for relaxing safety standards.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:42 pmTPM is dead on. RR would benifit from reading the links prior to inserting foot in mouth.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:44 pmHow many people have died in the U.S. from mad cow disease?
May 30th, 2007 at 3:44 pmI would pay extra for safe food and eat less.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:48 pmHow many people have died in the U.S from terrorist attacks timmy?
May 30th, 2007 at 3:49 pmRoger, nice try, but once again you miss the gist of the thread entirely. Hope you like prions in your burger!
May 30th, 2007 at 3:51 pmHow many people have died in the U.S from terrorist attacks timmy?
Comment by hellinabucket
3000, now can you answer my question?
May 30th, 2007 at 3:51 pmThe same number of people that have died from nuke power.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:57 pmI hope they find a cure for Rosie’s sake
May 30th, 2007 at 3:58 pmIf we mandate an extremely expensive test on every single cow, we the consumer are the ones that pay when the price of beef goes even higher. We the consumer have to decide how much more we want to pay I guess. TP seems to be of the opinion we should be paying more for beef. You realize that our schools and the working poor also will have to pay up. Seems like a bad choice right now since mad cow is not prevelant.
Comment by Roger_Roger
Where do you get this “extremely expensive test” cowpie? The UK and Japan test all slaughtered meat for BSE. And we can’t? According to news reports, the test would add 6-8 CENTS per pound of beef. You don’t think a few pennies is worth it?
I’m sure that the working poor really appreciate your concern, but they probably don’t want to die from BSE any more than I do.
May 30th, 2007 at 3:59 pmI hope that they find a cure for Rosie’s sake
May 30th, 2007 at 4:00 pmI recommend:
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
There’s a chapter on mad cow, e. coli, radiated meat, U.S.D.A. supplied beef for the National School Lunch Program., plus a whole lot more.
May 30th, 2007 at 4:02 pmHah! There’s your free market truly at work! Corporations love the free market as long as they control it, but let a small company come in with a better product or a competitive advantage and the corporations will immediately scream “unfair!” and will get their paid flunkies in the Gov. to change the law in their favor… what a sick system we’ve got.
May 30th, 2007 at 4:03 pmMany US Alzheimer’s Victims
Actually Die From Mad Cow/CJD
‘At Yale University and the Penn State University at Pittsburgh, researchers recently studied the brains of people who died of Alzheimer’s disease (46 in the Yale case and 54 in the Pittsburgh study). Surprisingly, the autopsies respectively showed that 13 percent and five percent of the dead were actually CJD cases misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease.’
http://www.rense.com/general46/many.html
May 30th, 2007 at 4:04 pmMad Cow is here and has been, we just choose not to test for it (less than 1%). It would cripple one of the largest and most profitable industries in the country.
May 30th, 2007 at 4:06 pmWhat have we done about those 3000 dead timmy? And why is the government stopping a private company from wanting to improve the safety of it’s product.
May 30th, 2007 at 4:08 pmCreekstone Farms would bear the cost of the tests and pass that cost on to its own consumers. Other consumers could continue to buy less expensive beef as they do today. Any problem with that, since that is what the Bush Administration is preventing?
If the facts are as presented, the administration is making an incorrect decision.
May 30th, 2007 at 4:09 pmWhat have we done about those 3000 dead timmy? And why is the government stopping a private company from wanting to improve the safety of it’s product.
Comment by hellinabucket
Why haven’t you answered my question?
May 30th, 2007 at 4:10 pmWhy does the Bush Crime Family hate “we the people” so much?
May 30th, 2007 at 4:11 pm“If we mandate an extremely expensive test on every single cow, we the consumer are the ones that pay when the price of beef goes even higher.”
I, for one, am more than willing to pay what it takes to keep our food safe. Unfortunately this may raise the cost of beef by 10 cents a pound and the meat packers will raise the cost of beef by 50 cents a pound, thereby making an extra 40 cents a pound….and they will blame it on the testing.
Welcome to the United Corporations of America folks. Get used to it because it looks like it is here to stay the way the Democrats are joining in on the worship of corporations over we the people.
May 30th, 2007 at 4:15 pmThe USDA’s dilemma on this issue is akin to that of the Highway Safeties Commission on seat belts. In that case Ford Motor Company was allowed to install safety belts in its 1955 cars. The rest of the industry protested loudly, but was turned down by the HSC. Since then, restraint systems have saved more US lives then have died in all wars that the US had participated in since the Civil War.
How can we be sure that the up tick in Alzheimer’s is not due to this hidden disease? The cost of this test amounts to about ten cents per pound of beef if done to every animal. What the other processors worry about is that the rejection rate for unsafe beef would increase.
May 30th, 2007 at 4:17 pmUDDER DENIAL or WHY MAD COW DISEASE MAY BE IN YOUR FRIDGE TODAY
http://home.earthlink.net/~astrology/udder.htm
May 30th, 2007 at 4:20 pmIf the facts are as presented, the administration is making an incorrect decision. Comment by m12 — May 30, 2007 @ 4:09 pm
Well DUH!!! That’s *ALWAYS* the case with you WINGNUTS!!! That’s why you hate the FACTS – *ssh*le!
May 30th, 2007 at 4:20 pmguess how much it will cost these companies if even one person gets Mad Cow? tons!!!
May 30th, 2007 at 4:22 pmI hope for Rosie’s sake that they find a cure
May 30th, 2007 at 4:27 pmKatie,
May 30th, 2007 at 4:28 pmWe were working in the same direction. The Japanese pay about $50 for the test and $30 for tracking the carcass. Each carcass is serialized. And, I would be more than willing to pay for it!
Good question timmy. post#45 may have a better answer to your question as to how many people have died in the US from Mad Cow. Now can you answer my question. What have we done to avenge those 3000? And why is the government wanting to stop a private company from having a more stringent testing done on it’s product?
May 30th, 2007 at 4:30 pmFor anyone who is interested in helping to SUPPORT Creekstone’s efforts, I just got off the phone with their customer service center, letting them know that we consumers appreciate their efforts to test their product, and asked that they FIGHT BACK against bush’s efforts to shut down safety in favor of the profits of his donors/cronies.
If you’d like to contact them, too, and find their products in your area, please visit:
http://www.creekstonefarmspremiumbeef.com/
PEACE
May 30th, 2007 at 4:30 pmKatie,
We were working in the same direction. The Japanese pay about $50 for the test and $30 for tracking the carcass. Each carcass is serialized. And, I would be more than willing to pay for it!
Comment by WaltTheMan
What about poverty stricken families that barely have enough money to buy food as it is?
May 30th, 2007 at 4:33 pmanother good reason to go vegetarian
May 30th, 2007 at 4:34 pmGood question timmy. post#45 may have a better answer to your question as to how many people have died in the US from Mad Cow. Now can you answer my question. What have we done to avenge those 3000? And why is the government wanting to stop a private company from having a more stringent testing done on it’s product?
Comment by hellinabucket
I don’t think that the government should interfere with the business here. With that being said are you really comparing the threat of terrorism to the threat of mad cow, when no American has died from it. As for #45s post can you post something from a more objective source than “Excerpted From the Vegetarian Voice
May 30th, 2007 at 4:38 pmA publication of the North American Vegetarian Society”. Where is Harvard’s actual study? Where is Yale’s?
#60 – timmy,
May 30th, 2007 at 4:50 pmI cannot believe that they would rather lose their minds then stretch the budjet a bit. Besides, most of the poor I know live on poultry, pork and starches.
timmy, you are the one that started the terrorist talk back at post 34. I didn’t jump up and claim the virtues of testing or the qty of actual cases. The thread was showing the flip and flop of this administration. All for the free market until a company sees an opportunity that will hurt some major campaign contributors.
I’m not the flag bearer for this cause. But you were the one that brought the terrorists into this.
You still didn’t answer what we’ve done to avenge those 3000.
May 30th, 2007 at 4:50 pmThe current state of conservatism: they’re fighting to make sure that our government DOESN’T take steps to protect the public. That’s why they’re called “e-coli Republicans.”
Conservatives: what part of “provide for the general welfare” don’t you understand?
May 30th, 2007 at 4:55 pmWhat did we do to avenge the killing of 3000 of our people by 15 Saudis, 2 Jordanians, an Egyptian and a citizen of UAE?
We killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis of course. And, the scary thing is that this makes perfect sense to our conservative trolls.
May 30th, 2007 at 4:58 pmWasn’t Bush just speaking about the necessity of other countries to buy American beef? I think he was speaking in Texas somewhere.
If we are not adequately ensuring the safety of beef, we are all at risk and so would any other nation who purchased the beef.
That’s the Repugs for you — people can be put at risk because the cattlemen and meatpackers interests are more important.
May 30th, 2007 at 5:03 pmmaybe mad cow has already been here and circulated throughout the republican party in dilluted form.
May 30th, 2007 at 5:04 pmAside from the peanut butter and spinach fiascos, being vegan still has better odds than eating fellow mammals…
May 30th, 2007 at 5:08 pmtimmy, you are the one that started the terrorist talk back at post 34. I didn’t jump up and claim the virtues of testing or the qty of actual cases. The thread was showing the flip and flop of this administration. All for the free market until a company sees an opportunity that will hurt some major campaign contributors.
I’m not the flag bearer for this cause. But you were the one that brought the terrorists into this.
You still didn’t answer what we’ve done to avenge those 3000.
Comment by hellinabucket
I started the terrorist talk? Here is what I said. “How many people have died in the U.S. from mad cow disease?” Then you said in post #36 “How many people have died in the U.S from terrorist attacks timmy?”
Please get your facts straight. You brought up terrorism, not I.
May 30th, 2007 at 5:09 pm#60 – timmy,
I cannot believe that they would rather lose their minds then stretch the budjet a bit. Besides, most of the poor I know live on poultry, pork and starches.
Comment by WaltTheMan
Again, it comes back to how many people have died of mad cow disease in the U.S. Do you think poor people would want to pay more to test for something that hasn’t even killed an American?
May 30th, 2007 at 5:10 pm#68 – hellinabucket,
May 30th, 2007 at 5:11 pmJust listen to one of W’s speeches. It is here!
One other thing – this should be yet another huge red flag at how poorly we treat food animals in this country.
Considering that you are what you eat, even you self-absorbed types should care about the health and stress levels of your future Big Macs.
May 30th, 2007 at 5:11 pmYou still didn’t answer what we’ve done to avenge those 3000.
Comment by hellinabucket
I don’t know how mad cow and terrorism are related here.
May 30th, 2007 at 5:12 pmtimmy, nobody is saying this test should be mandatory. It’s a private company looking for an edge. You know, free market. Republicans used to love that. What happened? Did the terrorists take that too?
May 30th, 2007 at 5:12 pmThe Bush FDA’s test for Mad Cow is like a state trooper concluding you’re drunk only after you spit up, fall down, and smash his patrol car with your own. If a cow doesn’t fall down in a lather while in front of an inspector, it’s A-OK by them. Given how few inspectors the FDA fields, no wonder it says it inspects “less than 1%”. Probably a lot less.
Big Meat won’t have to test its cows if it doesn’t want to, not under current FDA rules, but any processor should be able to test its animals using internationally recognized tests and standards.
That of course, might make Big Meat’s industrially grown carcasses less saleable if it doesn’t test. Mind you, those wizard-like tests might disclose other things about Big Meat’s meat that it doesn’t want us to know. Kinda like those life insurance blood samples.
May 30th, 2007 at 5:12 pmMmmmmm…mad cow and e. coli.
Isn’t it nice to know that one SINGLE infected cow, can get mixed in with 100’s if not over a thousand others in one GIANT vat of dead cow carcasses?
Industrial beef production is so appatizing!!
May 30th, 2007 at 5:18 pmtimmy you are correct, please accept my appologies. I was the one who brought it up and I am wrong to do so.
May 30th, 2007 at 5:20 pmtimmy, nobody is saying this test should be mandatory. It’s a private company looking for an edge. You know, free market. Republicans used to love that. What happened? Did the terrorists take that too?
Comment by hellinabucket
As I said before I am with the meat company here that wants to test. I am just trying to understand the paranoia behind mad cow. Again you bring up terrorism here?
May 30th, 2007 at 5:21 pmtimmy you are correct, please accept my appologies. I was the one who brought it up and I am wrong to do so.
Comment by hellinabucket
Apology accepted.
May 30th, 2007 at 5:22 pm#71 – timmy,
May 30th, 2007 at 5:23 pmHow many poor people who buy Bentleys do you know? That is the cheaper cut of Rolls-Royce. Bottom line, they make do with what they can afford. In addition, the beef industry spends more on ads then they do on the carcasses.
I guess I’m a little confused about where conservatives stand on this particular issue. A company wants to do some specific testing on its meat so that it can ship meat to Japan and gain a competitive advantage over its competitors. Free market conservatives seem to be arguing that it’s OK for the government to step in and prevent this company from testing.
Sorry conservatives. You’re just not making any sense.
May 30th, 2007 at 5:25 pmMad Cow or BSE’s human variant, Creutzfeld-Jacob disease is rare and difficult to diagnose; its symptoms mimic Alzheimers. Since we test virtually no animals and fewer humans for the diseases, we have little data about how prevalent they are in this country. The incidence of it in the UK was probably hidden for a couple of decades. When its presence was finally admitted, it cost billions to control, with costs still coming in. England is about the size of New York state, so go figure.
We do know that today’s food production is global. It’s not just oranges from Florida or pet foods from China. The outbreak of avian flu virus in British chickens may have come from a shipment of carcasses from a related processing plant in Hungary. Ad nauseum.
Testing and inspection should be much higher on the FDA’s To Do list than they are at present. It’s not clear that they are even doing any planning for enhanced testing (or enhanced interrogation, for that matter). Once you start testing, you’re liable to find out all sorts of things that would put Upton Sinclair off his food.
May 30th, 2007 at 5:28 pmHow many poor people who buy Bentleys do you know? That is the cheaper cut of Rolls-Royce. Bottom line, they make do with what they can afford. In addition, the beef industry spends more on ads then they do on the carcasses.
Comment by WaltTheMan
So why not make hamburger something they can no longer afford. I guess they are the same as Bentleys.
May 30th, 2007 at 5:40 pm#84 – timmy,
May 30th, 2007 at 5:52 pmIf we test 1 out of a hundred animals for mad cow desease, the odds of detecting a single infected animal are 1/100.
If the entire population is tested, the odds of detecting the infected animal are 1/1.
I, for one, do not enjoy the pleasure of playing Russian Roulette with my food.
Someone clue me in if I am wrong… but doesn’t it appear Bush is trying to kill off as many as he can and ruin as many social programs as he can while robbing the treasury for himself and his buddies?
Comment by had enough — May 30, 2007 @ 3:14 pm
May 30th, 2007 at 5:54 pm——————
you are correct. you obviously have NOT been drinking the kool-aid
timmy, are you a free-market guy or not? Because you’re arguing that the government can arbitrarily prevent a company from doing something it feels is necessary for business. Personally, I’m not a “free market” guy myself, so I think these issues should be judged on a case-by-case basis. In this case, the company wants to do something which is good for the public – increase testing for disease, so I think they should be able to go ahead. But, how can a “free-market conservative’ argue that the government can prevent this?
May 30th, 2007 at 5:59 pmWhat about poverty stricken families that barely have enough money to buy food as it is?
Comment by timmy
As if you care.
May 30th, 2007 at 6:16 pmOf all the contributions that government has made to our well-being, the decision to begin inspecting and regulating our food supply is the best, most intelligent innovation of the 20th century. It’s bad enough now that the USDA is closing inspection stations, that the food imported into our country (including food ingredients) is completely free of inspection, but we have an inexpensive method of testing for BSE and don’t use it?
Are we collectively insane, or have we simply forgotten the lessons learned more than 100 years ago?
May 30th, 2007 at 6:27 pmAre we collectively insane, or have we simply forgotten the lessons learned more than 100 years ago?
Comment by gummitch
Yes.
Anything for a buck……even a holey brain.
May 30th, 2007 at 6:41 pmOh well, my comments are disappearing, one, by, one.
May 30th, 2007 at 7:24 pmOK, evidently little timmy couldn’t get his head around the fact that “free-market” conservatives are arguing that government should prevent a company from doing a perfectly legal and reasonable thing to increase their competitiveness, so he did what most of these trolls do when faced with an intellectual challenge — he ran away.
May 30th, 2007 at 7:53 pmTimmy, since you work for a Meat Packer let me ask you a few questions.
May 30th, 2007 at 8:37 pm1-Remember what happened the last time we had a Mad Cow scare?
2-What happened to your Company’s profit margins that time?
3-Why is it that Canada, Great Britain, South Korea and Japan (among others) mandate testing of ALL beef entering their Countrie’s from the United States?
Bottom line is “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Personal Disclaimer:I trade Commodity Futures and Options including the Live Cattle and Feeder Cattle Contracts.
I grew up in Arkansas City, KS, where Creekstone Farms is located and I still have family living in that town of 15,000.
Just a couple of points to clarify the issue.
1) Creekstone came up with this idea more than two years ago, when Japan – their biggest market – banned importation of all U.S. beef. The idea was to do 100% testing to convince the Japanese Gov’t that their product was undergoing rigorous safety controls, and to create a marketing niche in Japan. They were rebuffed then by USDA.
2) Creekstone continues to provide (as noted above) most (if not all) of it’s meat for overseas sale so the increased cost is passed on to consumers in foreign countries like Japan. Arguements about poor inner city families not being able to buy Creekstone beef are not valid for that reason, but that argument isn’t a complete meme or strawman. Sadly, the poor will never be able to afford the “cut above,” be it beef or produce or housing. The key should be reasonable risk management to ensure a safe food supply for all, based upon analysis of “how much” should be tested to ensure food safety to a “reasonable degree of certainty.” The current USDA standards are more knee-jerk arbitrary standards (pushed by the beef industry), than a scientifically based analysis of the risks.
3) That is the larger issue. Is the testing criteria a matter of risk abatement or meaningless action to get people to believe their food is safe? This is the question the agribusiness community and the USDA don’t want to deal with.
4) Finally, I grew up in that town and still have family there. That packing plant has been a major employer for many years. When it shut down in the 1980’s after being sold to a large agribusiness concern, the town struggled to stay afloat. I believe the current owners have a non-union shop (when I was a kid it was Union shop with great benefits) and enjoys a “live and let live” relationship with the city and county (Cowley County) concerning environmental waste (they do meet all environmental standards but pump fat and other beef byproducts into the Arkansas River – great for catfish fishing – smelly and not great for swimming). Issues like this one have done more than Iraq or Gonzo-gate to turn this little corner of Kansas “blue.” Family members tell me this has people mad – not just Creekstone employees and the local farmers who sell livestock to them for slaughter – but the average “Wal-Mart shopping, pick-up truck (with gunrack) driving redneck” is pissed about this and they are increasingly blaming the Bush Administration. They remember Dan Glickman – Clinton’s Sec. of Ag, as a guy who grew up an hour north of town (Glickman has since “gone Hollywood” after replacing Jack Valenti as head of the Motion Picture Association of America) and they are starting to see how little this administration cares about the heartland. They are feeling betrayed by this administration and are realizing that even though they are “Republicans,” they are just a bunch of hick outsiders that the party elite don’t give a damn about. They feel like they have better representation in Hollywood than in Washington.
There is hope for Kansas yet.
Long post – Sorry.
May 30th, 2007 at 10:01 pmBush is a mad cow himself, so he does not want to be tested > LOL>
May 31st, 2007 at 2:07 amIt’s curious how a history about 3000 cases of lepper in 30 years upsets so much the health concerned republicans, because they atribute (wrongly) the cases to immigrants, but the far more daunting, indetectable, dangerous, and with no known cure of Mad Cow is not so scary for the republicans, because in this case are involved great corporations benefits.
I guess that their concern isn’t USA people’s health.
May 31st, 2007 at 8:52 amI hate to say it folks
WE have failed in our responsibility as voters and we deserve this corrupt government. Nothing will be done about it, no one will demand that he change it and we will all just sit here posting snippits on thinkprogress while we get screwed over.
It’s time we started blaming ourselves for this shit. I am involved with two different groups to try to put a stop to some of this and this country is completely apethetic and the corporations are calling the shots now.
May 31st, 2007 at 10:27 amOK, evidently little timmy couldn’t get his head around the fact that “free-market†conservatives are arguing that government should prevent a company from doing a perfectly legal and reasonable thing to increase their competitiveness, so he did what most of these trolls do when faced with an intellectual challenge — he ran away.
Comment by Bluedog49
Actually I don’t have the time to sit here all day. However, I ask you to go back and read my posts and you will see that I am against the government making the meat company not test. Where did I say that the government should be allowed to do this? Where did I say that I was in favor of this? All I have done is wonder about the hysteria behind mad cow disease. So please read what I say instead of making your cookie cutter questions for anybody that thinks differently than you do.
May 31st, 2007 at 10:40 amAs if you care.
Comment by Zooey
Of course I care about poverty stricken people, obviously you don’t-that is sad.
May 31st, 2007 at 10:48 amIf we test 1 out of a hundred animals for mad cow desease, the odds of detecting a single infected animal are 1/100.
If the entire population is tested, the odds of detecting the infected animal are 1/1.
I, for one, do not enjoy the pleasure of playing Russian Roulette with my food.
Comment by WaltTheMan
Very good math-now take the total number of people in the U.S. that have eaten beef and the total number of people in the U.S. that have been killed by mad cow.
May 31st, 2007 at 10:49 am