T-Bone or Porterhouse?

[Guest ncm2169]

I don't know if food is considered part of Politics, Religion or War. I guess we'll find out.

 

From the blog, Daily Kos, today, May 30, 2007:

 

< USDA to free market: Go Cheney yourself.

by Kagro X

Wed May 30, 2007 at 12:00:11 PM PDT

 

You're not gonna believe this one. Oh wait, of course you will:

 

The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

 

You read that right. The Bush "administration" will fight to keep meatpackers from testing their animals for mad cow disease.

 

WTF? How does stupid shit like this always end up happening?

 

A beef producer in the western state of Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wants to test all of its cows.

 

Great! Wonderful! Everybody's gonna want their meat from Creekstone Farms! Free enterprise at its best! Give the people what they want!

 

Not so fast, says the "administration." The people can go Cheney themselves.

 

But why? Why the hell would anyone get in the way of something like that? And on what grounds?

 

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well.

 

The Agriculture Department regulates the test and argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry.

 

Oh my God. F this. Are you kidding me?

 

I'm at a loss here. But thankfully, Rick Perlstein at .common sense is not:

 

First, observe the contempt for liberty. When E. coli conservatives say self-regulation is preferable to government, they're even lying about that. Second, observe the contempt for small business. When a small company want to - voluntarily! - hold its product to a higher standard, the government blocks it, in part because bigger companies have to be protected from the competition, in part because a theoretical threat to the bottom line (false positives) trumps protection against a deadly disease.

 

There's your conservatism, America: not extremism in defense of liberty. State socialism in defense of Mad Cow.

[Guest n2colour]

Phrased that way., it seems to me to be about all three, and that the politics, religion and war involved were your very own personal version.

 

This could easily have been written another way, without the inflammatory and juvenile verbiage, generating an interesting conversation, and opening a few eyes (and minds, perhaps). We probably agree most of the time about a wide range of issues, political and otherwise, but I think twaddle like this not only serves no useful purpose, it ends up being completely counter-productive. JMO, of course. YMMV - in fact, I'm sure it does. Enjoy.

[Guest zipperzone]

>Phrased that way., it seems to me to be about all three, and

>that the politics, religion and war involved were your very

>own personal version.

 

How do you draw that conclusion. As I read it he was quoting from 2 different blogs. He probably agrees with them but it's a stretch to say there were his own personal vision.

 

>This could easily have been written another way, without the

>inflammatory and juvenile verbiage, generating an interesting

>conversation, and opening a few eyes (and minds, perhaps). We

>probably agree most of the time about a wide range of issues,

>political and otherwise, but I think twaddle like this not

>only serves no useful purpose, it ends up being completely

>counter-productive. JMO, of course. YMMV - in fact, I'm sure

>it does. Enjoy.

 

God forbid that anyone call a spade a spade. You seem to prefer it to be wrapped up in ribbons & bows and dumbed down to the extent that it fails to draw attention to it.

 

If the reportage is accurate, people should be irate.

[+ purplekow]

Testing all cows for Mad Cow Disease is likely to lead to increased prices with very little if any real benefit in maintaining the safety of the beef in the US. The number of false positives would undoubtedly cause the need for isolation of large herds while retesting is going on. The cost for this, the tests, the retests would all be passed on to the consumer.

 

This raise in cost might be worth it if the food supply were indeed safer. Since Mad Cow Disease is such a rare disease in the US and Canada, there will certainly be many more false positives than real positives. There is the danger of this becoming a situation similiar to the little boy who cried wolf. A real positive may be treated nonchalantly after dozens, hundreds or even thousands of false positives. This might make the situation less safe rather than more safe.

 

Still and all, I don't think the government should stop a small company from testing all its cows should it wish to do so. However, the idea that all the large companies would have to follow suit or be out advertised by the now safe smaller company is misguided. The large companies could certainly undercut the price of the small company, they could point out the rarity of the disease in cows and the infinitessimal number of cases of worldwide human disease or they could just get lucky and have the small company have a large number of false positives which will drive their price to non-competitive levels or cause them to retreat from the test all policy.

 

While I agree that the government should not prevent the testing, the idea that the Department of Agriculture is just bending to the whim of Big Beef, does not reflect the fact that there are statistical and policy reasons why less testing may be more prudent.

 

 

 

I have never seen a purplekow;

I never hope to see one;

I can tell you anyhow;

I'd rather see than be one

 

Help there is a purplekow in my mirror

[Guest Merlin]

Several countries, including Japan, bar American beef because of several incidents involving mad cow disease in cattle imported from Canada. The Dept of Agriculture has been working hard to pursuade those countries to resume purchasing beef from the US. More testing, especially without government supervision, involves the risk of false positives.Even one false positive would delay the resumption of purchases by Japan and hurt all American producers amd farmers.

[Guest n2colour]

As they say at Burger King, "Have it your way!" In the big scheme of things, it really makes no difference to me.