Wall Street Journal: "The Bush administration said it will fight a ruling allowing meatpackers to test their animals for mad-cow disease...Kansas-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows...Larger meat companies say if Creekstone tests its meat and advertises it as safe, they might be expected to perform the expensive test, too."
As Rick Perlstein says, that's excessive regulation at the expense of a small business that wants to compete by offering a superior product, in order to protect big companies from a notional threat to the bottom line.
100% tested beef would get 100% of my business. Assuming the company was transparent enough that I could verify it wasn't just a PR stunt.
Posted by: RB | May 30, 2007 at 06:20 PM
The "free market" in action.
Posted by: DrFrankLives | May 30, 2007 at 06:26 PM
Is the fox watching the hen house? Is anybody watching the hen house?
I guess they're waiting for a few real cases of mad cow disease to show up first before getting all preventative in someone's face.
Posted by: Ishmael | May 30, 2007 at 10:07 PM
Some people think that it's socialist ranting, but it is precisely examples like these that fuel the claims that large corporations have broken the food system.
Posted by: Laurie | May 31, 2007 at 09:01 AM
"The Bush administration said it will fight a ruling allowing"...ALLOWING?!?! You mean they don't even want a company to voluntarily test? What's up with that?!?!
Posted by: Astro Boy | May 31, 2007 at 09:37 AM
Big farms are big business and big business gives money to the GOP so they keep regulators off their backs.
Food safety in the US is becoming so degraded that someday the only alternative will be to grow it ourselves or join cooperatives. But we also share some of the responsibility for wanting the cheapest product without doing the homework about where it comes from and what our government is doing to make sure it is wholesome and free of disease.
Rather know what Paris Hilton is up to!
Posted by: Ishmael | May 31, 2007 at 10:12 AM