April 13, 2004
Thank Goodness for Science... Let's take five with Moira Gunn. This is "Five Minutes."
The US Department of Agriculture has forbidden a Kansas livestock company from rapid-testing all their beef for Mad Cow disease. The specific government authority apparently comes from the Virus Serum Toxin Act of 1913, a time when technology, science, global markets and powerful lobbying groups were a whole different matter.
Since the "mad cow" incident of last December, when a single beef steer was found to have BSE - or more accurately Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy - a few major world markets have just said "No," even though American beef standards have been modified.
Just when the idea of "downer cows" captured our imagination, we were told that unless these animals could stand up, by golly, they weren't going to make it into our food supply. We could rest assured that American beef was safe.
Of course, Japan literally didn't buy it. Not mention South Korea, Canada and Mexico. Reports are that these last two countries have been coming around to the US way of thinking, but Japan has simply stuck to its guns: Test every animal, or forget it.
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In the interim, the USDA approved a "rapid test" which is acceptable to the Japanese, and Creekstone Farms Premium Beef said, "OK. We'll do it." All they needed was USDA approval to use the test on every animal, but the USDA has just said, "No." In an official statement, and let me quote: "The use of the test as proposed by Creekstone would have implied a consumer safety aspect that is not scientifically warranted."
What could this mean? Well, it means a lot of things. If we simply apply it to agriculture, it means that the availability of organic vegetables implies a consumer safety aspect concerning the great bulk of our mass-produced genetically-modified vegetables. Well, yeah. But organic vegetables are everywhere, and consumers haven't shunned the basic food supply.
Perhaps more importantly, Creekstone is simply saying that it's wants to do this for beef that sells to the extremely lucrative Japanese market, a customer whose absence since December has caused them to lose $40,000 each day and lay off 50 people.
But wait, the USDA insists that there's even more science to consider.
The USDA tells us that "this action and the approach are based on recommendations by an international panel of experts who reviewed our systems. That panel also explicitly noted that there is no scientific justification for 100 percent testing because the disease does not appear in younger animals." What it doesn't say is that the majority of US cattle are younger animals.
You might think that the beef industry would be up in arms about all this, but think again. The National Cattlemen's Beef Association fully supports the USDA in this decision. Right there at "beef.org" they say, and I quote: "Negotiations with officials in Japan ... are hampered by their view of the science." They also express a concern about "just how far the industry should go beyond sound science to satisfy the perceptions of big export customers."
But read on and you'll find reference to the rising pressure from "thousands of Japanese consumers and their food industry suppliers who are frustrated at the lack of U.S. beef" and that complete testing would cost $30 per head, nearly $300 million.
So, what should we make of this? For a while, there it actually looked like science was driving the bus. But we know better, don't we?
I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.
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