a beef about beef

[hmelton]

Appeals Court Rules
US Can Block Mad Cow Testing

http://news.slashdot.org/news/08/08/30/238223.shtml

READ ALL THE COMMENTS! for a far better understanding of what is a extremely short inflamatory article on a very complex
subject.

The article seems to be aimed at scaring/angering people, however as a person with a good agriculture background admittely mostly row cropping I must say this
has bothered me enough to very seriously consider stopping all purchases of "public" beef and reverting to buying directly from known herds and
butchering the animal myself with a known butcher. I do have a good working knowledge of cattle,swine and chicken farming, but I'm not directly involved in
those agricultural industries.

I almost didn't post this, because it's such a complex issue and the last thing the agriculture industry needs is more knee jerk reactions caused by
Oprah level agricultural ignorance. However this is a very important issue and I personally think more of the public needs to know about this ruling.

I personally think the USDA and the judges have made the mistake here and the ruling already has reduce the safety of beef significantly.

howard melton

God bless

[Star Ranger4]

I dunno Howard. Looking at this, and reading the commentary...

I have to agree with the court ruling. The packer wants to pull something that they can then turn around and use to convince people with Oprah level ingnorance
that their beef is safe when you dont actually know, because it is the cheapest and fastest, and essentially LEAST accurate test because of the age of the
cattle in question.
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[Matrix Dragon]

Not to mention they could then use their '100% tested Beef' to up the price of their meat.

But at the same time, the attitude of killing the cows at a point before infected cows begin to show symptoms does show a level of stupidity on the part of the
USDA. "If we close our eyes and wish really hard, the problem will go away!"

[hmelton]

If I read the ruling right the judges essentially gave the USDA a monopoly on all mad cow testing and criminalized any second party testing.

Yes the company is defintely up to something very shady and they needed to be called on it. That's why I emphasised the importance of reading the
commentary.

However the judges very wide ruling seems to be overkill and geared toward achieving something else for the USDA.

Why give the USDA a monopoly on testing for something as dangerous as the mad cow sickness when all that was needed was a ruling that forced the company or any
other company to use the more expensive and accurate test on each cow before being able to claim or advertise thier product as being 100% tested beef.

The USDA and the FDA have become huge often ineffective agencies that like the IRS are almost a power unto themselves, but where the IRS can and does make
millions of dollars vanish in various types of errors every year the USDA has the potential of making millions of lives vanish in some truly horrific ways.

It looks like the USDA like any large government agency is taking steps to increase it's power over the "civilian" population and at the same
time remove any oversite that population has over it.

The 1 in 100 tested with a single standardized test also bothers me.

Biological systems are incredibly complex and are ever changing with a nearly limitless number of input variables causing significant changes in the chemical
makeup of the animals.

Sure the statistics showed that doing more test was nearly useless, but that was under a set of condition that no longer exist.

Just to give you an example of one variable that has had a profound effect on what cattle are fed take what has happened since the price of corn has
skyrocketed. Corn once a staple of a herd's diet is now severly reduced replaced with a unpredictable mishmash of what ever is cheaper.

I've seen farmers substitute nearly everything imaginable, take for example prickly pears as cattle feed.

Feed companies are doing the same thing substituting lower priced alternatives for the corn whereever possible and producing feeds that are significantly
different from what they were a year ago.(Remember the Chinese pet food that killed because of substitutes that pass the test?)

Will this standardized 1 in 100 test work effectively when the conditions it was developed and tested under have changed this much?

When we are talking about something as incureable as mad cow I don't think I'd can be so trusting of the USDA approved 1 in 100 test or the statistics
they use to justify using it. Especially when I've also just seen the USDA take what looks very much like steps to prevent or criminalize any sort of
second guessing or oversite of thier method.

howard melton

God bless

[LilFluff]

How about a compromise?

The USDA gets to have a 100% monopoly on all Mad Cow testing, with anyone else trying to test being a felony on par with murder. In return, should there be any
Mad Cow outbreak in the United States (including and expanded to all US territories and protectorates and anywhere the USDA has right to hold an inspection),
then the upper management of the USDA is decimated. In the original definition of the word.

Extreme? Maybe (fine, certainly). But when we're talking about something as devastating and incurable as Mad Cow disease I have to wonder about the sanity
of anyone who is opposing additional testing, especially self-paid testing. It would be one thing if the guy had wanted to do additional testing and then pass
the bill to the USDA. But if he wants to pay for it himself then let him do it.

I'm all for telling people they can't make any unsupported claims in their advertising (part of my problem with the people who want rBGH labeling on
milk), but banning any 3rd party testing? As far as I am concerned as soon as the first person suggested that they should have been asked, "So, you are
willing to accept full, personal, responsibility and liability for beef safety?"
-----

Will the transhumanist future have catgirls? Does Japan still exist? Well, there is your answer.

[Black Aeronaut]

Have them live a steady diet with one beef product a day made from this 100% Tested Beef. We'll see how comfortable they get.