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USDA Parades Dog-And-Pony Show Over Mad Cow Disease
Posted by Pile
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The online free encyclopedia Wikipedia defines "dog-and-pony show" as a public "display that is somewhat pathetically contrived." That's what the new U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Johanns, is convening this Thursday, June 9, in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Secretary Johanns will lead a roundtable discussion dominated by the most powerful agricultural lobby organizations in the United States to spread the good news that mad cow disease is no longer a problem in North America. The invited participants include the American Farm Bureau, the American Meat Institute, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the National Meat Association, the National Milk Producers and the National Renderers Association. Not a single consumer, human health or public interest group was invited to speak, nor were any scientists who research mad cow and related diseases, such as Nobel laureate Dr. Stanley Prusiner. The USDA hopes to convince the assembled news media that it's time to open the U.S. border to Canadian cattle and time for Japan and Korea to accept U.S. beef and cattle.
There's just one problem with this rosy picture of mad cow disease in North America: it has little or no basis in fact. |
The steps that the United States and Canada must take to prevent the spread of mad cow disease have not been taken. Instead, lip service and deception have fooled the media and the public, while dangerous animal feeding practices remain routine; hundreds of millions of pounds of slaughterhouse waste are still fed to North American cattle.
Even with the 2003 discovery of mad cow disease in North America, the Bush administration is refusing to take the steps proven to address the problem. Those simple measures have worked well in Europe and Japan: a rigid, complete ban on any fat and protein from rendered slaughterhouse waste in livestock feed, and testing millions of cattle a year to ensure food safety. Japan tests 100 percent of its cattle (although U.S. pressure recently resulted in Japan agreeing to waive testing requirements for cattle younger than 20 months). In more than a decade, the United States has tested fewer than 400,000 cattle of a third of a billion cattle slaughtered.
Rather than protect animal and human health from bizarre and always fatal dementia diseases - diseases that can incubate in people invisibly for decades and contaminate the blood supply - the Bush administration is siding with the huge corporations that dominate the cattle industry. The USDA and the Food and Drug Administration are still allowing slaughterhouse waste in the form of blood, fat and meat and bone meal to be fed to cattle, pigs and other livestock. At the same time, the USDA, FDA and the livestock and animal feeding industries have maintained successful PR campaigns to fool the media and the public into thinking that such feeding practices have been banned.
The dog-and-pony show planned in St. Paul is just one aspect of this deceptive PR. The USDA plans to fly the Secretary of Agriculture into St. Paul and surround him with friendly industry supporters. Everyone will smile for the cameras, making sweeping if unsupportable assurances about the safety of the U.S. meat supply and demanding that the Japanese and Korean governments open their borders to untested U.S. beef weaned on calf milk supplement containing cattle blood. |
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Well, well, well
Posted by Master Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi on 2005-06-08 20:49:35 | | It angers me to hear they are really not appreciating the scientests who actually DECLAIRED mad cow disease gone. How degrading... |
more news
Posted by Pile on 2005-06-15 14:39:45 | | The US government |
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