MORE BSE MADNESS

Having just taken steps backward from protecting the American public against Mad Cow, the cattle/regulatory industry - known jointly as the FDA and USDA - may be in for another dope-slap: UPI reports that the federal meat inspector who was charged with misconduct by the USDA after claiming mad cow disease safeguards were being violated at slaughterhouses said he plans to file charges against the agency.
"Stan Painter, a USDA inspector and chair of the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals, the inspectors union, notified the agency's management in a letter last December he was aware of instances where the riskiest parts of older cows were not being marked or removed from processing." And here comes the kicker... "On Dec. 28, 2004, the agency charged Painter with personal misconduct for not revealing the names of the inspectors who told him of the SRM violations. Officials also told him he was under a formal investigation, which was dropped last month after the release of internal documents revealing more than 1,000 violations of the USDA's SRM regulations." Hmmmmm.

And how about those assurances, just before the 2004 election, that Japan was thisclose to dropping their ban? "Japan's food safety panel said Monday that U.S. cows were exposed to a higher risk of mad cow disease infection than their Japanese counterparts due to insufficient feed control in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, Kyodo News agency reported. Panel head Yasuhiro Yoshikawa said in the report that the extent of feed contamination in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s was up to 10 times as high as that of Japan." Hmmmmm... and Japan has had how many mad cows?