IT'S NOT JUST MONTANA ANYMORE

Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming have joined the chorus of US states assuring their citizens that the chance of their having been fed BSE beef, while not yet able to be ruled out, was still really really small. That's because after stopping in Montana, the five high-risk cows - which could be any five of a pool of 22 - were spread among various states for slaughter, and "what became of the carcasses after slaughter was unclear." Well, uh, does it really need to be said - that if you had a credible program to test these things and track them, it'd be a hell of a lot clearer??? The best the USDA can offer is "as far as I know"s. As far as I know, they've all been sent to slaughter,"Veneman told reporters. Great. "As far as I know, you're not dying of Mad Cow Disease." Whew! Meanwhile, even Japan is apparently considering banning American beef over safety concerns as the foolhardy nature of U.S. meat regulation becomes apparent to the outside world. The silver lining is, this should lead to substantially more testing of cows, and hopefully more thorough record-keeping of human CJD patients. And once that happens, who knows?

No one knows

As far as I know.