STOP TESTING THAT COW!

Here's a little trip down memory lane - an old fight that's just be ratcheted back up between the USDA and small meatpacker Creekstone Farms, the one that wants to BSE-test 100% of its cows. And of course, the USDA, which tests around a tenth of one percent of US cows, is actively fighting that move.

What's new is not just the latest round of appeals, suits or counter-suits, but the candor: "Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too." That's right, let the free market decide - unless it means dollars lost to the big meatpackers. It will surprise no one to learn, as the article continues, that "[t]he Bush administration sided with the large meatpackers."

There are larger fissures on the Right than this, but it's a telling sample of their dog-eat-dog, man-eat-cow ideology: Not only are animals and consumers thrown under the proverbial bus to please the big meatpackers - even meatpackers are being played for chumps by the Bush administration because they're a threat to other meatpackers. Big Business uber alles!

UPDATE 6/4: US beef exporter screws up again, allows BSE-risk material into shipment - South Korea re-institutes ban on US beef

'NEW COKE' WON'T HAPPEN AGAIN

"Under pressure from animal rights advocates, two soft drink giants, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, have agreed to stop directly financing research that uses animals to test or develop their products, except where such testing is required by law."

BUT WHICH GOVERNMENT?

"Government says eat less meat to save planet" blares this headline, but anyone harboring hope that the government in question would be ours, doing an about-face into the land of reality and facts, should get a hint from the fact it's a Reuters story. In other words, the government in question is that of the United Kingdom.

"Eating less meat and dairy could help tackle climate change by reducing the amount of methane gas emitted by cows and sheep, a government agency says. In an email leaked to a vegetarian campaign group, Viva, an Environment Agency official expressed sympathy for the green benefits of a vegan diet, which bans all animal product foods."

The story itself is a little weird and weak, failing to address the fact that animal agriculture is not just one of the factors but the most significant factor in greenhouse gas emissions, and also involving that mysterious non-official email, but even with all those caveats, it's a lot further than we've gotten on this side of the Atlantic.

MILLS: NO MILK

Heather Mills, late of McCartney fame, says she's going completely vegan, for a couple of reasons. "Miss Mills believes there are various health concerns linked to cow's milk, including allergies," reports the Daily Mail writer who can't be bothered to look up whether Mills' "belief" is actually soundly documented science, "[b]ut she said a key objection is the way milk is produced. 'It is the obscenity of taking newborn calves away from their mothers so we can have their milk - a product designed by evolution for little cows, not little people, or big people for that matter.'" 'Bout sums it up!

BABY STEPS

One of the funny moments in Happy Feet is when Mumbles the tap-dancing penguin tries to teach someone else to do so - "You put one foot in front of the other..." It was a direct ripoff of that song from Santa Claus is Coming to Town, man!

Anyway, that's the wrapper for these tidbits, none of which is really noteworthy enough in and of itself to be cause for celebration, but if taken as harbingers of things to come, then crack out that bubbly!

U.S. stops breeding chimps for research

Illinois Governor Signs Horse Slaughter Ban
UPDATE: 10-day stay for Slaughter Ban

Cruciferous vegetables cut bladder cancer risk by 30 percent (Note how this take, from "nutraingredients.com," focuses on isolated components, in a perfect example of what T. Colin Campbell talks about in The China Study.)