MORE ON THE MAD-ISH COW

Some interesting perspectives in the wake of Friday night's announcement of another possible Mad Cow: As you'd expect, John Stauber casts this as "The US government's elaborate cover-up of mad cow dangers in the United States has begun to unravel." And he's got good reason to say so, especially in making the point that as the USDA falls back on the "born before the feed ban" excuse, we have in fact still no actual feed ban working. Meanwhile, another group opines that "
The United States needs stricter safeguards against mad cow disease, but has not introduced them in part because of pressure from meatpackers to keep costs down." The president of this group went on to say: "The major meatpackers in the United States and Canada do not want to incur these costs. We think they are having far too much influence on the BSE policies of USDA." Wow - PCRM? GAP? Consumers Union? Nope - it's R-CALF USA, the biggest American organization of cattle ranchers. At least we can be sure the meatpackers are only having an adverse influence on USDA's BSE policies... (*cough*)