USDA BSE TESTING CHIEF QUITS

Bobby Acord, administrator of the USDA's Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service, resigned today, for personal reasons. You know, more time with his family and all that. Oh yeah, and also he didn't think we should be widely testing for Mad Cow. A year ago, he said "There is no scientific evidence to support anything beyond what we're doing in this country, quite frankly." This was when they were still doing 10,000 cows a year and expanding it to 20,000. A simpler time, no?

And in what I assume is a coincidence, on the same day, the head of Japan's Gyudon rice bowl chain Nakau also announced he will step down due to the Mad Cow crisis. After all, What kind of gyudon shop doesn't serve gyudon? In a somewhat humorous note, the company ran out of beef due to the ban on American imports of dubious safety. But "bowls of rice topped with chicken, introduced to replace the beef, have fared poorly in the wake of the outbreak of bird flu in Japan."