The Assault on Parody
Forget Al Gore’s Assault on Reason, the administration is carrying out assault on parody:
Via Chicago’s own Rick Perlstein we find that the USDA is fighting to stop a company from testing all of its beef for E. Coli:
WASHINGTON – The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Arkansas City-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows.
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.
A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. The ruling was to take effect Friday, but the Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal — effectively delaying the testing until the court challenge plays out.
Mad cow disease is linked to more than 150 human deaths worldwide, mostly in Britain.
There have been three cases of mad cow disease identified in cattle in the U.S. The first, in December 2003 in Washington state, was in a cow that had been imported from Canada. The second, in 2005, was in a Texas-born cow. The third was confirmed last year in an Alabama cow.
The Agriculture Department argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry. U.S. District Judge James Robertson noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on and said the government didn’t have the authority to restrict it.
The best line is this one:
The Agriculture Department argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry
I have about a billion snarky things to say, but really the straight story is the funniest.
May 30th, 2007 at
The false positive part sounds like 1990 arguments against HIV testing.
May 31st, 2007 at
Which is why it was a really stupid argument then.
The only good false positive argument I’ve seen *recently* is Floyd Landis’. And even then it’s not so much a great argument as much as less stupid than the other arguments.
May 31st, 2007 at
mad cow disease isn’t E-Coli.
Its a brain wasting disease that is absolutely untreatable, and, if transmitted to a human, 100% lethal, generally within a few months. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is the human version that is believed to be caused by eating mad-cow tainted animal products.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creutzfeldt-Jakob_disease
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_cow_disease
It’s worse than E-Coli, though less common.
June 13th, 2007 at
[...] Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 in “Grassroots” Conservatives by robnesvacil First, the conservatives spoke up for germs because germs, you see, have no discernible mouths (let alone vocal chords or lungs) and cannot speak for themselves. Conservatives seemed to be telling us that the USDA didn’t really need to inspect as many cattle as they’re supposed to because germs like the Mad Cow Virus and E. coli have rights too and we wouldn’t want to impede on their rights to privacy, interstate mobility or, heaven forfend, profit. [...]