Mad Cow Disconnect
(Seattle) As people across North America spent part of the New Year’s holiday worrying about the contamination of the US beef supply… some foreign governments seemed to take added joy in “sticking it” to the USA with heavy handed beef boycotts… that now has put thousands of pounds of pre-cooked French fries in export limbo. Is this some sort of political disconnect? Are foreign governments really worried? Or is this payback time for other US so-called “transgressions” on the world stage?
This one sick cow in Mabton, WA seems to have made the rounds… and is now connected in one way or the other to 10,000’s of pounds of beef. One the one hand, published reports tell us that safety measures were in place to identify the cow as “sick” so that body parts from the animal (the spine and brain) could be tested. Yet, if there was suspicion that the animal was sick (reports from the scene indicate that the cow could not walk)… then, why was the cow slaughtered and put into the food chain? Is this a regulatory disconnect? It seems to this correspondent that any sick animal that triggers testing for disease concerns, should not be slaughtered for food.
In a convenient twist for the USDA, the sick cow seems to trace back to an infected herd from Canada… a story first covered in these pages last year. If that proves to be true, then… again… it begs the question: If the USDA knew that there was an infection in Canada, then why was this cow (or, as may prove to be true, these cows) allowed into the US via Washington State? Another disconnect?
As beef prices fall dramatically, so does the stock of big beef wholesalers like McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s. The effect on the American beef industry could prove to be dramatic. Was this a common sense disconnect? This correspondent is lead to believe that the answer is yes.
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As a writer, Michael David McGuire has covered numerous news and feature stories from across North America, Europe and Asia.
