ONE MAD COW POST TO GET YOU THROUGH THE WEEKEND

I know, I know, I know, I've been remiss in keeping you up to date on everything with the confirmation of the latest admitted US mad cow (here's the latest on it from Google). I posted the news on Metafilter Friday night and have been mostly updating with new links there. Also, I've been prepping for Summerfest, and will be there over the weekend, so probably no more posts till next week.

But one link to ponder is, of course, Steve Mitchell's latest, revealing that "The watchdog group Public Citizen filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act last December for reports documenting how certain safety policies are being violated at slaughterhouses and how banned parts of older cows, such as the brain and spinal cord, have been entering the human food supply." And you'll never believe this, but even though by federal law, the USDA has 30 days to respond to a FOIA request, "so far the agency has failed to fulfill this requirement to Public Citizen." Huh. Odd, no? But surely there's no need to be concerned.

Oh, wait. "People should be concerned," Tony Corbo of Public Citizen told UPI. "The USDA has been touting this as one of their firewalls, that they're removing these risky materials." Wait - you mean even the new, moved-inside firewalls might not be firewalls after all? Be careful saying that: Stanley Painter did, and "USDA officials have asked the Office of Inspector General to consider conducting a criminal investigation regarding Painter. Corbo and Nestor said this could be a violation of the Whistleblower Protection Act."

Stay tuned. This is going to continue to be interesting, for those who have enough sense to pay attention to it.