Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Editorial: A sane ruling on mad cow testing
An appellate court says the USDA can bar testing -- but that doesn't mean it should.
From the RoundTable blog
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A U.S. Court of Appeals ruling that bars a Kansas meatpacker from testing all its animals for mad cow disease -- an expensive step major meatpackers resist -- sounds like yet another industry victory that sacrifices the public interest to private interests. In this case, though, there's a twist.
The test in dispute is not likely to detect the disease in most cattle slaughtered in the U.S. -- even if the animals are infected.
Despite that drawback, the industry fears that if some U.S. companies test all carcasses for the disease, the rest will be compelled to follow suit or risk the public perception that their meat is less safe. Big meatpacking plants are right to try to avoid testing that likely would raise prices for consumers without making the product safer.
Still, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's testing ban is too heavy-handed.
Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, a Kansas meatpacker, says that it has lost business in foreign markets since December 2003, when the first cow in the U.S. to have mad cow disease was reported. Since, there have been two others. Scientists think people eating the meat of an infected animal can contract a variant of the fatal neurological disease, which causes a cow's central nervous system to degenerate.
Creekstone Farms wants to use a so-called rapid test, which produces results in a matter of hours rather than the days or even years that other tests can require. The company would test all of the animals it slaughters so it can assure foreign buyers that its beef meets the same testing standards as other countries'.
The USDA ought to be able to let U.S. beef exporters offer that assurance without allowing them to make false claims. The facts, as summarized in last week's 2-1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, make the rapid test's limitations abundantly clear.
It can detect mad cow disease only two to three months before a cow shows symptoms, while the incubation period of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, its formal name, is two to eight years.
"Because most cattle for slaughter in the United States go to market before they are 24 months old," the court notes, "it is unlikely that the rapid BSE test will detect the disease."
The court overturned a ruling by a lower court, which can hear new arguments by Creekstone Farms. The judiciary must settle points of law.
Matters of policy, though, are left properly to lawmakers and those charged with implementing laws. Surely effective public education and labeling rules at home could allow exporters to satisfy the differing demands of markets abroad, while protecting the safety and pocketbooks of Americans.
