Mad Cow Madness Continues

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the meatpacking industry agree: The American beef supply is safe from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), a.k.a. “mad cow” disease. They know this because the USDA has been spot-testing slaughtered cattle for years.

That works for me, but maybe it’s not good enough for you. Maybe you don’t trust the statistical sampling process. Maybe the next time you bite into a juicy sirloin steak you’d like to know that the actual cow you’re eating was tested and found free of BSE.

You’re probably not the only one. Fortunately, there’s Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, which in 2004 began plans to test every cow for BSE.

Unfortunately, there’s also the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the meatpacking industry, which have made every effort to stop the testing.

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well.

As I explained in my earlier post, this is seen as a bad thing in the communist-style command economy that serves as our agricultural policy, and the Department of Agriculture likes to protect our agricultural industry, even at the expense of consumers.

The USDA lost their court case in 2007, but they appealed the decision, and last week the Department of Agriculture won the appeal when the D.C. Court of Appeals rolled over and played dead for the USDA:

Last year a federal judge ruled that Creekstone must be allowed to conduct the test because U.S.D.A. can only regulate disease “treatment.” Since there is no cure for B.S.E. and the test is performed on dead animals, the judge ruled, the test is not a treatment.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned that ruling, saying diagnosis can be considered part of treatment. “And we owe U.S.D.A. a considerable degree of deference in its interpretation of the term,” wrote Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson.

I suppose you could reasonably argue that, in general, diagnosis is part of the treatment process, but I do wonder what treatment Judge LeCraft has in mind for curing a dead cow.