Alert! DMN Realizes Humans Can Contract Mad Cow from Eating Flesh

[Guest guest]

Who knew the DMN editorial board could think? But, not to worry. The Earth has not yet spun from its orbit. They only sort of got it right as they stopped short of concluding that if humans did not eat cows, humans could not get bovine spongiform encephaly at all. See the DMN editorial (below) from May 19, 2008. However, they have afforded us a good opportunity to make a point for vegetarianism. Please mention the title of the editorial ("Our Beef with the USDA") when you write a DMN LTE at:http://www.dallasnews.com/cgi-bin/lettertoed.cgiThank you. Margarethttp://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/DN-creekstone_19edi.ART.State.Edition1.460ab0a.htmlEditorial: USDA, we have a beef 06:39 AM CDT on Monday, May 19, 2008 Imagine the Bush administration going to court to prevent Ford from improving safety standards on its cars to meet consumer demand because Chrysler and GM were afraid the market would force them to follow suit. Crazy, right? But that's exactly what the federal government is doing to a Kansas slaughterhouse. Like all U.S. beef processors, Creekstone Farms submits samples of its beef to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for routine inspection for bovine spongiform encephaly (BSE), or mad cow . But the Kansas processor wanted to go further. Mindful of the $200,000 per day it lost when Japan and South Korea earlier banned American beef in a mad cow disease scare, Creekstone built a half-million-dollar lab to screen all its slaughtered beef for the disease. Nothing doing, said the USDA, which has been fighting little Creekstone in court for two years over the matter. In a federal appeals court last week, government lawyers, presumably with straight faces, argued that Creek-stone should not be allowed to perform voluntary additional testing on its product. Why? Because, a government lawyer argued, it might lead to "false assurances." False assurances? Europe tests every cow it puts into the food system – yet the U.S. government tests less than 1 percent of all American beef cattle. Under those circumstances, how certain can regulators possibly be that their assurances are true? Even if the USDA is right, shouldn't consumers decide how valuable the extra testing is to them? If beef eaters are willing to pay a few cents per pound more for meat that's been tested beyond federal safety standards, why should the government

care? Here's why: The beef industry has been lobbying hard to stop Creekstone's testing plan, fearing that market forces might compel them to follow suit. So what? That's how markets work. As long as meat processors meet the USDA baseline, there is no good reason to forbid them from going the extra mile. The Bush administration is protecting someone in this case, and it's not consumers. Nor is it the public interest.