I've already blogged on this topic
at ridiculous length, so just a comment and a link today. They've found another case of Mad Cow Disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) in a cow in the US, and
much ado is being made while much incompetence is revealed at the USDA.
New tests have confirmed that a Texas animal federal officials earlier declared to be free of mad cow disease did have the brain-wasting ailment, the U.S. Agriculture Department announced yesterday.
The definitive testing, done in England over the past two weeks, showed that the ailing animal, first flagged as suspicious in November, was infected with mad cow disease. The animal was retested after the USDA's inspector general requested the additional check because of continuing concerns about the sample dismissed by the agency...
[USDA Chief] Johanns sought yesterday to assure consumers that U.S. beef is safe, and that any suspect beef would have been kept off supermarket shelves. But he acknowledged a number of embarrassing mistakes and oversights by the agency. In addition to misdiagnosing the diseased sample, officials apparently mislabeled the sample that tested positive, officials said. According to USDA's chief veterinarian, John Clifford, a tag describing the breed of the infected animal was apparently mislabeled, an error that has slowed the process of determining where the diseased animal came from.
Countries that care about their public food safety, Japan, Taiwan, and others in Europe, have immediately
blocked imports of US beef, but I doubt we'll see any real reaction in the US to this. Not until there are dozens of positive BSE tests a year will people take notice, and I can't see that happening unless the USDA actually starts trying to protect the public health, rather than covering up and boosting beef industry profits. In other words, it's not going to happen until Bush is out of office, at the very soonest.
In any event, Americans like their beef. Consumers here will avoid particular restaurants (I.E. Wendy's, when the finger chili story was active) but there's no way they're giving up their cow, short of certain death, and I'm not sure even that would deter people. America is truly the land of people who don't believe anything bad could ever happen to them, and besides, it's not as if your average hamburger-scarfing guy is all that concerned about his health. If he were he wouldn't be stuffing that sort of saturated fat and calories down his pie hole in the first place, now would he? If the guarantee of near-term obesity and long term heart disease isn't dissuading him, what are the odds that possibly developing some fatal brain-eating disease in twenty years will?
