WASHINGTON — The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

The Agriculture Department tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef.

But Kansas-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.

The Agriculture Department regulates the test and argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry.

A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. 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 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, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is linked to more than 150 human deaths, mostly in Britain.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/4846051.html

6/1/2007 8:53:34 AM

Quote :

"The Agriculture Department regulates the test and argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry."

what a great way to think. Either have a false positive that "harms the meat industry", or leave diseases undetected that could, you know.... "harm people"

6/1/2007 9:15:20 AM

depending on how many people, I could argue that it'd be better to keep the industry healthy

6/1/2007 9:30:44 AM

Why would you willingly prevent a company from testing all of its product to ensure its quality? That this company is willing to do the testing is a really good example of the capitalist system working; competition is causing the consumers to have more choices available to them. In this case, consumers can choose to buy beef that might not be safe (though the odds are probably good that it is safe), or they can choose to buy beef that they KNOW is safe. Why would anybody want to prevent that from happening?

6/1/2007 10:19:40 AM

^ i agree with that general point.

i think it's probably an overkill to require testing on 100% of beef. Doing something like that could 1) be prohibitively expensive, and 2) increase the likelihood of damaging false positives.

but if a company who purports to sell Premium Beef wants to test all their beef for whatever particular disease, it's unethical and irresponsible for the government to tell them they can't do so.

6/1/2007 10:29:30 AM

Excellent example of the gov't screwing up capitalism.

Here a company wants to get a competitive edge by being able to tell customers that it tests all their meat for safety. And the US Dept of Agriculture uses the courts to stop them.

If someone scratched this a little deeper, I'd bet they'd find a competing meat company who has a USDA uppity up in their pocket.

6/1/2007 10:32:18 AM

Quote :

"Why would you willingly prevent a company from testing all of its product to ensure its quality? That this company is willing to do the testing is a really good example of the capitalist system working; competition is causing the consumers to have more choices available to them. In this case, consumers can choose to buy beef that might not be safe (though the odds are probably good that it is safe), or they can choose to buy beef that they KNOW is safe. Why would anybody want to prevent that from happening?"

EXACTLY.

Answer: The lobbying system in the US. (which goes completely against capitalism and democracy in lots of cases)

6/1/2007 10:42:41 AM

Seems like an attack of the problem the wrong way. If there is an issue with false positives, then that needs to be worked out, not stopping testing because of a fear of it.

6/1/2007 10:51:22 AM

Quote :

"The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease."

WHAT THE GODDAMN FUCK!!!!!!!1

6/1/2007 10:51:53 AM

So this is the freedom and democracy that Bush wants to export to the world?

Food producers: We want to make sure our food is fit to be eaten.

Bush: No, you can't do that.

6/1/2007 11:08:12 AM

^ yeah, and don't forget "If you don’t test all your meat (Japan, England), we won't import from you!"

6/1/2007 11:17:34 AM

Time to start investing in Tyson Foods?

6/1/2007 11:19:24 AM

Consider this sitation (basically the side of the agriculture department, the people who know anything about testing meat):

If you're only testing 1000 cows per month, and the chance of a false positive is one in 1,000,000, then the likelyhood of getting a false positive is fairly low.

However, if you're testing 100,000 cows, then the likelyhood of a false positive increases dramatically. Keep in mind, a single false positive can effectively SHUT DOWN ALL BEEF EXPORTS for the entire country for a significant amount of time, possibly more than a year.

So you can see why testing every cow could potentially be a very BAD thing.

[Edited on June 2, 2007 at 11:36 AM. Reason : .]

6/2/2007 11:29:21 AM

Hmm, easy. in the event of a positive you slaughter the cow and put its brain under a microscope. Only then can you proclaim the test "Positive".

That said, foreigners never banned the importation of tested cows, it is just that there was no such thing as a 100% tested shipment of beef. In the event of a positive it is very possible that this company would be the only one still exporting, since it tests every single animal.

6/2/2007 12:05:02 PM

Why are you only considering the "banning" of exports, and not the public's tendency to shun beef that has a "tainted" image (especially in europe) banned or no?

What makes you think that further testing wont still result in a false positive?

[Edited on June 2, 2007 at 1:58 PM. Reason : .]

6/2/2007 1:57:35 PM

After a certain level of testing it is not a false positive.

Besides, people only shun beef that people feel is unsafe. If you slap a sign that says "100% tested" then people will clamor for your beef.

Back when the scare took place, it was rational to question the entire beef supply. This is because almost no cows were tested, yet cows were frequently traded back and forth between producers. So, if a cow got mad, it would begin spreading it around all producers until it was noticed and millions of cows were put down.

But if a company is testing 100% of its beef, if it gets a positive, false or not, then there is no rush to slaughter every herd it has sold cows too; because 100% of then were tested and were negative. In fact, consumers can even feel confident eating the beef from this company, since 100% of it that went to market was tested and proven safe, eliminating the need for a recall.

So, I don't see the problem here. 100% testing solves so many problems. it even solves the problem of false positives by making them no big deal.

6/2/2007 3:01:08 PM

Until people stop trusting "100% tested" because of a false negative

6/2/2007 4:05:59 PM

No matter what your odds are for getting a false positive, you always do more testing just to be safe. For example, suppose 1 in every 1000 cows has the disease. If you perform the test, it will come back positive 99% of the time if the cow truly has the disease and only 2% of the time if it does not (the false positive). If you work out the math, this means that slightly less than 5% of the cows that test positive will actually have the disease.

You might initially say that this test is not very reliable despite the fact that it does come back correctly 99% of the time in diseased cows and 98% of the time in health cows. But one way to look at this is to say that the cow's odds of having the disease have gone up from 1:1000 to roughly 1:20. In order to be sure that the cow you are testing is among those 1 in 20, you do more tests, tests that are more thorough but not always practical/necessary.

6/2/2007 4:33:03 PM

^^ Lumex, that would mean the food supply is actually invested with mad cow disease and getting past the testing process; at that point it doesn't matter what we do, did, or have done; all cows everywhere will be destroyed and the industry will be rebuilt from scratch. What's your point? Better to kill people en mass than have one company risk destroying its own reputation?

6/2/2007 5:05:01 PM