Editorial: USDA goes mad

Sacramento Bee
April 14, 2004
By Bee Editorial Staff

Meat plant told it can't test every cow

When Congress passed the Virus Serum Toxin Act back in 1913, it gave the U.S. Department of Agriculture too much power over meat testing. The act not only gave the USDA the power to tell ranchers and meat packers what safety tests they had to perform; it also gave the USDA the ability to prevent testing.

That is precisely what the Bush administration is doing now regarding "mad cow disease." In an abuse of this 91-year-old law, the USDA has told a Kansas beef producer that it can't test every slaughtered animal for mad cow disease. It seems that after more than nine decades, the Virus Serum Toxin Act could use a little rewriting. Ranchers should be able to go above and beyond federal testing regulations if they think it is in their financial interest to do so.

In the case of this Kansas beef producer, it wants to resume shipping its high-grade Angus steaks to Japan. That country has shut off all importation of U.S. beef since one domestic case was identified in December. Japan requires its ranchers and meat packers to test every slaughtered cow for the disease. It wants to hold beef from the United States or any other country to the same standard.

The Kansas producer has been losing $40,000 every day since losing access to Japan. Fifty workers have lost their jobs. To regain access to the market, it is willing to go along with Japan's test-every-cow rules.

The overall U.S. meat industry, however, is opposed to this level of testing. It considers it too much, and too costly. So the USDA is telling this Kansas meat packer that it can't test every slaughtered cow for the disease.

The meat industry and the USDA are holding out for testing only a fraction of 1 percent of slaughtered cattle for mad cow. Somewhere between this extreme, and Japan's, is probably a prudent minimal standard in terms of safety. But safety is only one standard for this market. There is also consumer preference, which has prompted the growth of demand for things such as organic foods.

There's clearly a market out there for 100 percent tested beef. There certainly is one in Japan. There's probably one in this country, too. It's too bad the ranchers of Kansas - or California, for that matter - are under a regulator that would rather guard against the phantom danger of too much testing than help producers supply foreign and emerging domestic markets.