No - not Marie Antoinette - but a similar arrogance. In the years of rebub control, as they have great faith that all businesses will always act ethically and therefore should not be regulated or overseen, the budget for testing food contamination has been gutted, and hence the epidemics of ecoli, listeria, fecal contamination, et al. Now our own agriculture department is losing a fight to prevent a meatpacker from testing all of their cattle for mad cow disease! They threaten sanctions if the meatpacker tested more than required by the govt - which is less than one percent.

Why? Can anyone explain how this benefits us citizens?


Judge: Government Does Not Have Authority to Regulate Private Testing for Mad Cow Disease

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON (Associated Press) -- The federal government must allow meatpackers to test their animals for mad cow disease, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, a meatpacker based in Arkansas City, Kan., wants to test all of its cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. Larger meat companies feared that move because if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they could be forced to do the expensive test, too.

The Agriculture Department currently regulates the test and administers it to less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows. The department threatened Creekstone with prosecution if it tested all its animals.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled that the government does not have the authority to regulate the test. Robertson put his order on hold until the government can appeal. If the government does not appeal by June 1, he said the ruling would take effect.

Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is linked to more than 150 human deaths worldwide, mostly in Britain.

There have been three cases of mad cow disease 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.

After the first case of mad cow disease heightened concern about the disease, the department increased its testing for the disease to about 1,000 tests each day.

Last July, the department cut its testing by about 90 percent. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said testing should reflect "a very, very low level" of the disease in the United States. Neither the department nor Creekstone immediately responded to a request for comment Thursday evening.

The Agriculture Department argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry. Robertson said he was concerned by that possibility but noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on.

Tests are done on brain tissue from cows, so animals must be killed before they can be tested. Because of this, Robertson rejected the government's stance that it has the authority to regulate the tests because they are used in the treatment of disease.

He said regulation of the tests might be appropriate through the Federal Trade Commission or the Commerce Department but, as the law is written now, the authority does not exist.

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And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it." --George W. Bush, Jan. 29, 2007

Interesting, good post.

a wealthy and modern society should be able to afford to do such basic things as ensure that the food we eat won't cause us to die. It's too bad Big Money can afford to pay the government to try and circumvent the protections of the free market. It's also too bad that the government doesn't care about general health enough to allow the free market to take so long to do something as obvious as require widespread testing of our food supply.

"Power" you're concerned with pure, raw, power, one human over another.

Tricky business.

A business selling diseased, contaminated meat in an open market of businesses selling meat is "regulated" and "overseen" by that market.

If instead, we pick you to have all this power, or some one else, how do we know you're looking out for our interest and not some other flavor of corruption?

I see your point, and it's a good question. A choice between an inherently impartial force that is the market, or an inherently fallible beast that is man, with absolute power corrupting absolutely.

The problem is that the incentives placed by the free-market system are purely dollar based, and there isn't always a dollar value for being a good person, which is why laissez-faire capitalism gave way to regulated capitalism in the first place; more profit can be made if there is no minimum wage, if you can exploit children, if there are no laws about where you put your waste or how tainted your food can be. I think good government has proven effective and useful toward the common good, and I believe that it is the interference of tycoons in government that allows for situations where there has to be a legal battle for the right to test all your meat.

A technologically advanced and wealthy society that can't manage itself well enough to trust it's own food supply, is stupid.

Repeat after me: The Market is a CONSTRUCT of human beings. It would not exist without lots of underpinnings like property laws, stable currency, etc.

And there is NO free market. None. Zip. nada.

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"Tomorrow, you're all going to wake up in a Brave New World, a world where the Constitution gets trampled by an army of terrorist clones created in a stem cell research laboratory, run by homosexual doctors who sterilize their instruments over burning American flags."

I consider regulation like alcohol.

A little is good for you, alot is bad for you.


I consider the call for more regulation in this case excessive.

I challenge the implication that some central, single entity should have power over a company, or an industry.

A month's or a quarter's profits selling diseased meat will doom a comany, it's executives and it's stakeholders, and they all know it IMO and will adequately regulate themselves.

No baby spinach growers, distributors or sellers here I take it?

The issue here is that Creekstone wanted to test all of its meat, and since some bigger companies thought they might lose money competing with a company that could say "all our meat is certified clean, not just 1 percent!" they got the Department of Agriculture to try and stop them.

Creekstone wanting to be more strict about testing is a good thing, and the government trying to stop them is an example of big business interfering with the government in order to regulate the competition. The only regulation I would call for based on this scenario would be regulating the control that businesses have over the government.

There needs to be a separation of business and state.

I don't think government is saying they can't test the meat, I think they are saying that they can't use the claim that they do as an advertising gimmick becausae it would be unfair to those that don't use the gimmick.

The consumer has no way of knowing whether or not they are following standard procedures for the test or even if they are performing the test at all.

Fuck you socialist dickheads.

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We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.