THREE STRIKES AND WE'RE DONE!

Showcasing the grasp of logic that has made it the global laughingstock of food industry oversight, the USDA announced today that now that it has found three mad cows in the U.S. it's time to... wait for it... stop testing so many cows! In addition to going from hundreds of thousands back to something around 40,000 cattle, the USDA will also rely on "market forces" and livestock producers' good intentions to assure that BSE-infected cattle can be traced back to their point of origin. Hopefully, market forces will also be able to cure the consumers who contract the fatal disease from the vast swath of untested U.S. beef.