U.S. wants to stop increased testing for mad cow

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: CNN/AP

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration on Friday urged a federal appeals court to stop meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease, but a skeptical judge questioned whether the government has that authority.

The government seeks to reverse a lower court ruling that allowed Kansas-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef to conduct more comprehensive testing to satisfy demand from overseas customers in Japan and elsewhere. Less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows are currently tested for the disease under Agriculture Department guidelines. The agency argues that more widespread testing does not guarantee food safety and could result in a false positive that scares consumers.

"They want to create false assurances," Justice Department attorney Eric Flesig-Greene told a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. But Creekstone attorney Russell Frye contended the Agriculture Department's regulations covering the treatment of domestic animals contain no prohibition against an individual company testing for mad cow disease, since the test is conducted only after a cow is slaughtered. He said the agency has no authority to prevent companies from using the test to reassure customers. "This is the government telling the consumers, `You're not entitled to this information,"' Frye said....

Larger meatpackers have opposed Creekstone's push to allow wider testing out of fear that consumer pressure would force them to begin testing all animals too. Increased testing would raise the price of meat by a few cents per pound....

The district court's ruling last year in favor of Creekstone was supposed to take effect June 1, 2007, but the Agriculture Department's appeal has delayed the testing so far.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/05/09/mad.cow.testing.ap/index.html

[Joanne98]

1. Of course.

[roguevalley]

65. my best friend's sister died of mad cow this january. unbelievable

they would do this.

[havocmom]

2. All the cattle producers I know (and I know a lot) want MORE testing.

The corporate powers dictating to the government these days do not want testing because they want to be able to sell anything.

Buyer be fucked. Producers get fucked. But the big processors and chains are happy.

[MuseRider]

3. Same here.

Nobody can understand this although you explained it perfectly.

[havocmom]

43. We need to educate the US Consumer: Some producers & smaller feed lot owners have been sued

BY THE US GOVERNMENT (or threatened with suits) when those producers & smaller feed lot owners wanted to do more testing. They have been FORCED to back off on actions which PROTECT consumers.

Why? Because huge feed lot operators and meat processors want the bar lowered so they can reap more profits.

The families up in the middle of the night, often in really foul weather, making sure a cow safely delivers a calf want to make sure that calf grows to be a healthy steer and enters a safe food market. Those families want YOUR food supply to be safe and they are being silenced by Global GIANT Ag Corps.
Those families, busting their asses to produce something they are proud to serve on their tables and send to yours, are being edged out of business by corporate puppets who want NO INDEPENDENT FOOD PRODUCERS.

Patented seeds? Yeah, makes Monsanto rich, but costs the farmer and you lots more to eat.

Controlled fuel cartels? Ditto, but with different corporate entities.

Hell, the US forced a law in Iraq that farmers there cannot save seed, they have to BUY it from the folks who brought them war and destruction.

It's all about making everyone dependent on the (pricey) Corporate Teat. Soylant Green was an awful movie, but the message was correct, and unheeded.

[DeepModem Mom]

5. Thanks for your informed post, havocmom. nt

[Kali]

10. yep

:yourock:

[Deja Q]

13. No customer = No money

I am confused by the logic. Unless there comes a point the time to test is longer than feasible?

[havocmom]

40. Here's the logic: The Ag Giants want the independent producers outta business

The Fat Cat developers want golf courses and McMansions. The REALLY Rich Guys want 'buffalo commons' a place where there are no people, save for the ones who can pay a fortune for the chance to prove their manliness with canned hunts.

They all want the family farmers and ranchers to disappear. Family farmers/ranchers are hanging on by a thread anyway. All ya gotta do is make sure the consumer is jittery enough to eat soy (ADM) and skip beef.

America is NOT safer with fewer and fewer independent producers putting food on the table. The cartels that rule fuel want to rule your belly too. They are almost there, folks. They WANT consumers to abandon beef for fear of mad cow. That will be the death knell for lots of independents who love America and are good stewards of the land.

I wish to hell we had an exchange student program for kids in the US. How much better off would we all be if city kids spent time in the country learning what farm/ranch life really was and if farm/ranch kids spent time in the cities to understand the challenges of their urban cousins?

Have lived in both cultures. We need better understanding and appreciation of each other's challenges. We NEED TO COME TOGETHER and fight the corporate giants fucking the whole nation. We need to stop this red state/blue state crap the GOP invented to create one more division to keep the population from coming together and REALLY EXERCISING THE POWER OF 'WE THE PEOPLE'

Madam Chairman, I yield the soapbox.

:rantoff:

[bulloney]

52. Family farmers are their own worst enemy. They support organizations like the Farm Bureau.

The Bureau supports this kind of laissez-faire corporate-controlled agriculture. They distract farmers from discussing market concentration by getting them all fired up over gun control and other non-farm issues. Every year, local Farm Bureau chapters pass a series of resolutions. When a local chapter takes a stand against the ag giants and the policies they stand for, they never see the light of day by the time they reach the state level.

But by god, those positions on guns, gays and flag burning make it. I know, I've witnessed it for years.

[havocmom]

55. NONE of the farmers/ranchers I know have any such allegiance to such a group

They are more concerned with real world

[struggle4progress]

66. The so-called Farm Bureau is certainly a peculiar scam

[bperci108]

4. Ahhhhhhh......

...you can just smell the lobbyist cash flowing from Tyson, ConAgra and the rest of BigAg, can't you?

Palast was right: We indeed do have the best government money can buy.



Welcome to the Corporate States of Amerika. :patriot:

All subjects will now stand for the playing of the Corporate Anthem.

[Sivafae]

6. And thus the reason I quit eating beef. eom

[ronnie624]

7. No surprise here.

I stopped eating hamburgers years ago, and since the video appeared of California beef industry workers shoving sick cattle into the slaughter house, I quite eating beef entirely.

Evolution never prepared humans for consuming beef anyway. The only way it can be consumed 'safely', is if it has been processed and cooked. If we were meant to eat beef, we would have large teeth and powerful jaws, and a digestive system capable of dealing with the pathogens and parasites found in the flesh of large herbivores.

[Kali]

11. uh we are perfectly adapted to eat a wide variety of foods, hence our

extreme "success" Evolution "prepared" us just fine.

[ronnie624]

12. Well, have yourself one of those big juicy cheeseburgers

that are found growing on the trees in Africa.

[Kali]

14. easier to digest than twigs and leaves

besides that was a hella long time ago, we've made a few changes to our physiology since then.

[ronnie624]

16. 80,000 years is no more than a tick of the clock

on the evolutionary time scale, certainly not long enough for any significant changes to occur in a large, complex species of mammal.

[Kali]

17. better do a little more research

we climbed out of the trees a LITTLE earlier than that

[ronnie624]

19. My point was that we left Africa no more than 80,000 years ago. n/t

[Kali]

24. yeah and the meat we had been eating for the previous

million or two years may have caused or allowed us to do that migration. Like I said, you might want to do a little more research.


And as an aside there can be significant change in 80,000 years.

[Penance]

23. Would you believe that 35 years is enough?

Here's a facinating and recent story about an extended experiment that left a group of lizards stranded on an island for 35 years. It looks more like an example of phenotype plasticity than speciation, but more to the point, check out the description of the changes in the critters' gut.

[ronnie624]

69. Fascinating. Thanks for the link. n/t

[Penance]

22. There are plenty of large herbivores in Africa

There were members of the family Bovidae in all the places where extinct members of the genus Homo evolved. It's the bun and cheese that took civilization. We know from cave paintings and archaeological sites that our ancient ancestors ate meat. Almost every human civilization on Earth eats meat in some form or other unless restricted by religious reasons. Existing hunter-gatherer tribes in remote areas get about 60% of their calories from meat as opposed to plants.

Physiologically, we have teeth that aren't as well-adapted to eating plants as our close relatives, like chimps and gorillas and our guts don't process plant matter nearly as well. We absorb iron, for example, much better through ingested blood than from plant food where the opposite is true for our fellow Hominids. We've also greatly reduced our ability to manufacture (by ourselves or by bacteria in our guts) our own taurine, certain types of fatty acids, vitamin A, vitamin B-12 and other nutrients essential for life and must either get them from meat or supplements.

We ARE meat eaters as a species and have been for hundreds of thousands of years.

[Kali]

25. millions of years

[Penance]

35. Probably less than 2 million

2 million is 20 hundred thousand. I stand by all my misstatements. ;)

[truedelphi]

33. I' m with you! I say there's nothing wrong with eating meat

Plus as long as people continue to eat meat there will be meadows with bushes and grasses and trees.

If everyone quit eating meat, the farmers would slaughter their herds and sell their pastureland to casinos and vintners. And then we wouldn't have the Oxygen producing flora but concrete for parking lots and acres of stripped back land with the wire cages holding the grapes.

Nowhere for tthe badgers, foxes, raccooons, birds, coyootes, and deer either!

What is wrong is the way that there are now huge indoor factory farms, and feed lots and the unsanitary and inhumane conditions of the slaughter houses. These conditions need to be changed, the sooner the better.

[ronnie624]

68. There is no doubt that our ancestors ate meat.

It is generally accepted that fatty tissues (DHA) from animals was necessary to the evolution of modern human brain tissue. However, it is far more likely that early hominids consumed the flesh of small mammals, birds, reptiles and fish as opposed to that of large herbivores. Taking down such large animals would have surely been difficult and dangerous, and successful hunts rare. Cave paintings offer no more than a glimpse of early human society, and do not necessarily represent the norm.

With regard to diet what students of human evolution and advocates of evolutionary medicine need most from paleoprimatologists is an estimate of the nutritional pattern likely to have characterized the last common ancestor of apes and humans, a hypothetical species thought to have existed in Africa between seven and five million years ago.

If members of this elusive taxon were like current chimpanzees and bonobos, plant foods such as fruits, leaves, gums, and stalks probably comprised at least 95% of their dietary intake with insects, eggs, and small animals making up the remainder (Milton, 1993; Tutin & Fernandez, 1993). The general nutritional parameters of an eating pattern along these lines can be estimated with modest confidence, although certainly not with mathematical exactitude. Protein would have contributed a greater proportion of total energy than it does for most contemporary humans, but with much more from vegetable sources than from animal.
(Popovich, 1997) Simple carbohydrate intake would have been strikingly below that now common, and, somewhat counterintuitively, such diets would have provided only moderate levels of starch and other complex carbohydrates so that the total carbohydrate contribution to dietary energy would have been less, not more, than is typical in contemporary affluent nations. Dietary fiber would have exceeded current levels by an order of magnitude: 200 grams vs. 20 grams a day (Milton, 1993): for some ancestral hominoids, colonic fiber fermentation may have provided over 50% of total dietary energy. (Popovich, 1997) Daily intake of vitamins and minerals is likely to have been considerably greater than at present with the likely exception of iodine, consumption of which would have varied with geographic location according to oceanic proximity, volcanic activity, prevailing winds and rainfall. As it is for all other free-living terrestrial mammals, sodium intake would have been only a fraction of that currently common and would have been substantially less than that of potassium. (Denton, 1995) Availability of phytochemicals, like that of vitamins and most minerals would, in all likelihood, have been substantially greater than for Americans and other Westerners.

*****

The industrial era and agribusiness have further distanced nutrition from its primate and Paleolithic antecedents. Roller-milling has reduced the fiber content of cereal grain-based foods so that total fiber intake has plummeted to levels much below those obtaining for agriculturalists, hunter-gatherers, or primates. (Eaton, 1990) Cold-pressing has facilitated extraction of vegetable oils (e.g. corn, sunflower, safflower) rich in w-6 PUFA and thereby exacerbated the w-6 : w-3 imbalance existing in the diets of affluent nations. (Simopoulos, 1991) The pricing structure for beef and other commercial meat has, until recently, rewarded breeding and feeding practices which maximize carcass fat deposition. This fat is deposited as an energy reserve, not for structural purposes, so its content of saturated, serum cholesterol-raising fatty acids is high. And not only do commercial meat animals have more depot fat than do their wild relatives; because they are now fed grain instead of forage, the w-6 : w-3 partition of their lipid is highly unnatural, with a marked w-6 excess. (Marmer, 1984).

Foods popular in late 20th century affluent nations include a profusion of commerc ially-prepared items. Humans are the only free-living species to consume such foods, whose natural origin is obscure, and the entities created by the food industry commonly provide inapparent salt, refined flour, sugar or corn sweeteners, and trans fatty acids in extraordinary concentration.

<http://www.cast.uark.edu/local/icaes/conferences/wburg/posters/sboydeaton/eaton.htm>

[Hidey]

8. Oh, look..

The great "capitalists" of the "free market" are using the hand of "big government" to squash competition and keep some innovative company from engineering value into their product by raising quality standards!

But, but.. I thought Rush and the rest of the idolaters said it worked the other way around?

[havocmom]

46. Welcome to DU, Hidey!

Yep, you got it right! Squash the competitions and keep the bar low while making the consumer get used to the idea that it's OK if food is bad. Anything to get those last few independent producers outta the way!

[Hidey]

60. Thanks for the welcome!

:)

[bulloney]

54. The thing that makes capitalism good is also what makes it bad.

By its nature, capitalism is cannibalistic. When left unchecked, you eventually have big fish swallowing up the small fish until you have one or a handful of global corporations running the markets, which is where we're at right now in agriculture.

We need internationally-enforced antitrust laws. The laws in our country are worthless and unenforceable because of the ease in which these corporations can move technology, capital and their headquarters.

Myanmar is exporting rice at a time when thousands of its people are starving after their recent disaster. International corporations have no loyalty to any country. They only answer to their bottom line and if it means starving people where the product is produced, so be it.

[Hidey]

61. Capitalism

By its nature, capitalism is cannibalistic. When left unchecked, you eventually have big fish swallowing up the small fish until you have one or a handful of global corporations running the markets, which is where we're at right now in agriculture.

Oh, I completely agree with you.. But the great, white "free market capitalist" says these things are self correcting, and that gouging only opens an opportunity for others to sell at a fair price.

This is true, so far as it goes.. but it's not necessarily reality.

Consider a conglomerate large enough to absorb a loss whenever it is challenged, only to jack prices right back up when its competitors have fallen by the wayside.

That's the part of the "free market" the right overlooks, the need for constant regulation.. Because, after all, it's easier to profit by cooperation (Monopolistic practices and anti-trust) than it is through legitimate competition.

[OhioChick]

9. Soon...

Our food will be no safer than China's.

[RC]

15. I quit eating beef years ago because I read too many stories

about slaughter houses processing downer cows. Using Bobcats or fork lifts to get downers into the line to be processed, etc. That coupled with this administration not allowing testing... Well, what's the intelligent thing to do? Don't eat beef or stuff that has beef products in it.

When I'm in Canada I still will sometimes eat beef because they don't cover it up the way they do here.

[Kali]

18. try local

http://www.eatwild.com/

[havocmom]

41. Local is great for those who can do it

We can get beef and free range chickens. Produce in winter, on the other hand, not so local ;)

havocmom, glad her Montana garden is in season.

[shadowknows69]

20. Guess the wife and I aren't starting up the beef diet again this year

My advance apologies to all the chickens.

[Grinchie]

21. "could result in a false positive that scares consumers"

Awww, thats too bad.

How about you actually develop a quick, simple test that doesn't have "False Positives" instead of wearing a bucket of sand on your heads, BushCo?

While your at it, make me a test I can use to see if any of my food has GMO components in it. I guarantee it would be a big seller.

Hate to say it, but we are all scared that you are protecting the Corporations first, and that is not what we pay taxes for, despite what the USDA thinks.

[shanti]

26. ok, i'm convinced

they really are trying to kill us. :(

[jeff30997]

27. "Increased testing would raise the price of meat by a few cents per pound"

Well what kind of idiot would pay a few cents more just for the futile purpose of eating safe

meat?:sarcasm:

[Leo 9]

28. Mad Elephant

Soon to be...

Dead Elephant

[gateley]

29. It's the money.

All of the programs have had their budgets slashed to help fund our War on Terra. When we were getting buried in lead painted toys from China, it was discovered that there are like, what -- 5-6 people to do the testing? For ALL those toys? (I may be thinking about the pet food, but still...) I DO remember for sure that the head of whatever department it was said she felt they had sufficient staff. Bush shill.

[nichomachus]

30. The Power of Lobbies

No single event marked the shift from eating food to eating nutrients, though in retrospect a little-noticed political dust-up in Washington in 1977 seems to have helped propel American food culture down this dimly lighted path. Responding to an alarming increase in chronic diseases linked to diet — including heart disease, cancer and diabetes — a Senate Select Committee on Nutrition, headed by George McGovern, held hearings on the problem and prepared what by all rights should have been an uncontroversial document called “Dietary Goals for the United States.” The committee learned that while rates of coronary heart disease had soared in America since World War II, other cultures that consumed traditional diets based largely on plants had strikingly low rates of chronic disease. Epidemiologists also had observed that in America during the war years, when meat and dairy products were strictly rationed, the rate of heart disease temporarily plummeted.

Naïvely putting two and two together, the committee drafted a straightforward set of dietary guidelines calling on Americans to cut down on red meat and dairy products. Within weeks a firestorm, emanating from the red-meat and dairy industries, engulfed the committee, and Senator McGovern (who had a great many cattle ranchers among his South Dakota constituents) was forced to beat a retreat. The committee’s recommendations were hastily rewritten. Plain talk about food — the committee had advised Americans to actually “reduce consumption of meat” — was replaced by artful compromise: “Choose meats, poultry and fish that will reduce saturated-fat intake.”

A subtle change in emphasis, you might say, but a world of difference just the same. First, the stark message to “eat less” of a particular food has been deep-sixed; don’t look for it ever again in any official U.S. dietary pronouncement. Second, notice how distinctions between entities as different as fish and beef and chicken have collapsed; those three venerable foods, each representing an entirely different taxonomic class, are now lumped together as delivery systems for a single nutrient. Notice too how the new language exonerates the foods themselves; now the culprit is an obscure, invisible, tasteless — and politically unconnected — substance that may or may not lurk in them called “saturated fat.”

The linguistic capitulation did nothing to rescue McGovern from his blunder; the very next election, in 1980, the beef lobby helped rusticate the three-term senator, sending an unmistakable warning to anyone who would challenge the American diet, and in particular the big chunk of animal protein sitting in the middle of its plate. Henceforth, government dietary guidelines would shun plain talk about whole foods, each of which has its trade association on Capitol Hill, and would instead arrive clothed in scientific euphemism and speaking of nutrients, entities that few Americans really understood but that lack powerful lobbies in Washington.

From here: (long but worth reading)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?ex=1327640400&en=7c85a1c254546157&ei=5088

[raystorm7]

31. Hmmm... Time to shop at Whole Foods or any place that respects their meat =/

[Liberty Belle]

32. This is insanity. Eat organic beef only, or no beef at all.

Only USDA certified organic beef must be raised in a manner that prevents the cattle from contracting mad cow (ie, they are fed only grain and processed in separate facilities).

Send a strong message to our government and the big companies pushing lack of testing by letting all that conventional beef rot on store shelves, and also contact your legislators.


Or maybe we should all start sending rotten meat to our legislators, until they get the point that this stinks.

[RC]

44. USDA certified anything means nothing anymore.

The on hand inspectors for the most part either aren't doing their jobs or can't either because they are told to ignore certain things and/or there are not enough inspectors to go around. Things have gotten far worse under bu$h. All the USDA stamp on the meat means is they have one.

[ToughLuck]

34. Is Bush planning on killing us too before he leaves office?

When has any president in this country done more harm than this one..unbelievable!

[whistle]

36. USDA is now under whose direction, what neocon/BushCo crony has that job now?

[havocmom]

48. Yep, and the worker bees in that agency are NOT happy with what bushco has done

Top posts filled by political loyalits, not anyone who cares to do the job well.

[rhett o rick]

37. Interesting that foreign consumers are more concerned than American consumers. Ignorance is bliss.

There are a lot of blissful people out there (republicans).

I don't eat beef.

[havocmom]

47. Giant Ag knows the smaller producers in the US are hurt when they can't export beef

Just one more way they are putting the smaller, more quality concerned producers outta business.

[nebby]

38. got stroke?

Eating meat clogs your arteries, so with the decreased blood flow to the brain, you can't understand how eating meat is bad for you.

[DeepModem Mom]

39. Good point, nebby -- welcome to DU!

[havocmom]

49. But, it was eating meat what made our brains bigger in the first place

Problem might be the sauces, which are a rather new variation from an evolutionary view ;)

More wine, less fat (plant fats too)

[Kali]

56. nevermind anything to do with sedentary lifestyles (based on the automobile)

or the kind of crap we fed the cattle themselves for the past few decades.
Looking for that good, thick, corn-derived, white fat to be on a piece of beef.

[havocmom]

58. Yep. Eating meat one had to chase down after hours of tracking

is probably healthier than going to the Safeway for chow :hi:

[The Backlash Cometh]

42. Finally. A judge with some brains. Must be a vegetarian.

[whistle]

45. How about increasing mad republican disease tests

:wtf:

[ginnyinWI]

50. it's easy to avoid beef

Use ground turkey or textured veg protein for sloppy joes or casseroles. Make tacos with fish sticks instead of meat. Eat turkey hot dogs instead of beef hot dogs, have more vegetarian meals with beans or lentils in them, eat eggs, eat chicken, eat fish, eat soy, and have no worries about the mad cow.

I've been doing it for eight years now. It's good for your arteries, too.

[Kali]

57. and for those who choose not to avoid it there are pretty easy ways

to find alternatives to the CFO model, these days. Personally, I would prefer a steak to a turkey dog any day.

[rasputin1952]

51. Once again...something that can actually protect Americans

is on the path to being shelved...the question is, why does this administration hate the American people so much as to put their health in further danger?

I'd like to see bush eating some "downer" cattle beef...about 6 years into his "retirement" he might be showing signs of his brain being eaten away by the prion that causes spongiform encephalitis...oh wait...judging by his thought processes now, it might already be taking effect...damn bastards.

[fascisthunter]

53. Yet They All Want to Protect Us from Other Dangers Such as....

drugs, violence, terrorism, etc.... surrrrre they do.

[havocmom]

59. And marijuna that may help so many without all the bad side affects

that Big Pharma serves up with their expensive marijuana substitutes

:smoke: <---I wish

[undergroundpanther]

62. I think they want as many people as

possible to die.Or it's good ole' buddy ass covering greed.. No other reasons makes any sense.
If the richest fuckers want to save the world for themselves, alot of people are going to have to die. Better we not know every thing is contaminated,the cows are sick,and the soil devoid of nutrients,an epidemic is inevitable,a few people shortsighted greed has destroyed everything, milk is full of pus,the weather is manipulated and half of some pizza cheese is analogue cheese and quite possibly plastic.

[NoodleyAppendage]

63. "few cents per pound" vs. BRAIN WASTING DISEASE. And, this is a problem?

Sounds like the government doesn't want you to know the Russian Roulette you are running when eating that USDA hamburger.

J

[AznLittleBile]

64. I stopped eating beef

That's how paranoid I am. :(

[DeepModem Mom]

67. Smart, AznLittleBile -- welcome to DU!