Thursday, October 2, 2008

Have we gone mad?

From Organic Consumers Association newsletter:

"Mad Court vs. Mad Cow A federal court has ruled in favor of the USDA in a long-standing dispute between the agency and a Kansas-based natural beef company that wants to test all of its meat for Mad Cow Disease. The USDA currently tests only a tiny percentage of U.S. beef cows for the fatal disease, unlike the EU or Japan, where basically all cows are tested at slaughter for the disease. The USDA's controversial and dangerous policy, an obvious attempt to cover up the fact that the routine practice of feeding slaughterhouse waste, blood, and manure to animals on non-organic farms has spread Mad Cow Disease a to many cows in the USA, has caused a number of major foreign nations to ban U.S. beef imports.

In an effort to re-establish trade, Creekstone Farms, a natural beef producer, (which does not feed slaughterhouse waste to its animals) responded to the loss of its foreign markets in Japan and Korea by asking the USDA if the company, itself, could pay to have all of its meat tested for BSE (Mad Cow Disease), thereby assuring leery foreign buyers of the meat's safety. In an outrageous move, the USDA threatened the company and its CEO with fines and imprisonment if they were to begin testing the safety of their beef. Creekstone took the USDA to court, claiming food manufacturers should have the right to invest in testing to make sure their food is safe. But a DC Court of Appeals recently ruled against Creekstone, saying the USDA has "broad powers' in interpreting how to enforce food safety laws."

Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_14873.cfm

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you read 'Fast Food Nation'?
Good title for your post, really...

HelloPame said...

Hi Mary!

No, I haven't read FFN...I had it in my hand and browsed through it many times but -funny you should ask- three times I ended up buying books by Michael Pollan and others in the same or similar topic. It's still on my list...did you like it?

Mary said...

Yes, I did. It changed the way we eat, for the better. :)

HelloPame said...

We eat pretty healthy for the most part home-grown, local or organic store-bought. We allow ourselves a small percentage for sweets (dark chocolate mostly) or organic meats. I have quite a few books in my short list, and still need to finish The Ethics of What We Eat, a good read, but the writer's not as engaging as Pollan. After that, I might give FFN a whirl. Thanks for the reminder! ☺